I was a bit surprised to read my colleague Marc Ambinder write last week that "fairly or unfairly, a healthy chunk of the national political press corps doesn't like John Edwards [. . .] Fairly or unfairly, there's also a difference in narrative timing: when the first quarter ended, the press was trying to bury Edwards." It hasn't been my experience that the press has a noteworthy special dislike for Edwards. But then you get this especially ridiculous passage from a ridiculous New York Times article:
“You neither want to be seen as somebody who cares too much about appearance or too little,” said Jay Fielden, the editor of Men’s Vogue. His magazine’s July-August cover shows John Edwards looking model-handsome and yet sufficiently populist. He wears, as Mr. Fielden pointed out, a Carhartt field coat from his own closet, presumably in an attempt to deflect scrutiny away from his wealth, his North Carolina McMansion and his costly grooming habits and toward the antipoverty agenda he pursued last week on a sweep through the South.
Edwards' coat choice was part of a nefarious plot to "deflect scrutiny" from the size of his house and toward his anti-poverty message? And his health care proposal was, I suppose, part of a scheme to distract people from the vital question of what kind of laundry detergent he uses.
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Heads in the Sand
If you don't think candidates put a lot of thought into what they wear, especially what they wear on the cover of a major magazine, you are seriously deluding yourself. Of course Edwards thought about those things. There's nothing "nefarious" about it though.
Posted by Mike | July 22, 2007 10:55 AM