Edwards entering before New Year

Posted by Mark Silva at 11 am and updated at 6 pm CST

John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina and Democratic candidate for vice president in 2004, is poised to announce his candidacy for his party's presidential nomination in 2008.

A reliable source says Edwards will make his announcement on Dec. 29 – the Friday before the New Year's holiday weekend – to gain a headstart on the heavyweight announcements expected in January. Another close associate of Edwards says flatly that the 29th is "wrong,'' but won't refute the notion that Edwards is planning a pre-New Year's rollout

With Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois planning to make their '08 intentions known soon – and with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani hovering on the GOP front – the New Year promises a flood of headline-grabbing announcements for a presidential campaign that will run the better part of two years.

This places Edwards – perhaps a tortoise among hares – in a position of grabbing all the attention he can for a long race.

Edwards, who never really stopped campaigning after President Bush's '04 reelection and defeat of the Democratic ticket of Sens. John Kerry and Edwards, appears undaunted by the considerable mass of the field assembling for '08.

"At the end of the day, the great likelihood is the cream rises to the top,'' Edwards said last month at a book-signing for the obligatory inspirational tome of anyone who seeks the presidency. Edwards was signing copies of "Home, the Blueprints of our Lives'' at a bookstore in – where else? – Iowa.

Edwards, who directs the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina, has kept his political operation alive with his One America Committee – named for the campaign theme that he crafted in his own campaign for the presidency in '04 before joining Kerry's ticket.

There are two Americas, Edwards admonished anyone who would listen – and many did – in '04. There is one America for the privileged, he explained, one for the impoverished, and the gap between the two is widening.

And Edwards already has recruited one tough player to serve as senior adviser to that One America Committee, former Rep. David Bonior of Michigan.

Bonior could be quickly parlaying that post into the role of campaign manager. Bonior carries the same credentials as a spokesman for the working class that Edwards – who happens to be a millworkers' son from South Carolina who became a multimillionaire trial lawyer – has cultivated through his one term in the Senate and first campaign for president. It's a message that Edwards probably will refine – as he strives to broaden his appeal – in the year of primary campaigning ahead.

Edwards' One America Committee didn't respond immediately to the Swamp's request this morning for details about the former senator's planned whereabouts next week. But this talk of an early announcement has generated a "buzz,'' one associate says happily -- Larry King's producers have called looking for a booking. If the rough timetable for Edwards' planned announcement is correct, there could be a certain South Carolina mill town on Edwards' holiday itinerary, if not also Larry King Live.

Edwards' team is getting in place, including some people who have served him in the past and people signing on anew. Bonior, who teaches about labor at Wayne State University, had backed former Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, the favorite among labor unions, in the '04 primaries. But Iowans made quick work of Gephardt in a party caucus contest that ended as a close race between Kerry and the late-breaking Edwards. Bonior signed on with Edwards toward the end.

"He was exceptional,'' Bonior said in a recent interview with the Raleigh News and Observer. "I liked his analysis of the two Americas and the need to bring unity. I was encouraged by his talk about issues that other people sometimes ignore. I think he would make a great president."

Bonior maintains that Edwards has not foresaken his commitment to bridging the two Americas – walking picket lines across the country and recently receiving the Paul Wellstone Award from the AFL-CIO. "His activism speaks loudly," Bonior said. "He has not only talked the talk, but he has walked the walk."

If the one-term senator's credentials run deeper on domestic matters than in international affairs, it seems that Edwards has been going to school on foreign policy – or at least geography – lately.

Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball, put Edwards through his paces Tuesday night with a pop quiz. Edwards named the leaders of Canada, Mexico, Iraq, Germany and Italy in the quiz. "This is not hardball – this is batting practice," Matthews told his studio audience assembled in Memorial Hall on the Chapel Hill campus of UNC in an aside during a commercial break. "This guy is killing me. He couldn't do this four years ago."

Edwards was less forthcoming about his campaign plans, however.

"That's something I'm in the process of deciding right now," Edwards told his television interviewer. "I want to spend the rest of my life serving, and the question is if this is the best place for me to do that.''

Edwards, who voted along with Kerry and 75 other senators in 2002 to authorize the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq but later turned against the war, said during this week's Hardball appearance that "the war is a mess.''

If Edwards is advancing his own campaign announcement, he also is chiding the president for delaying his announcement about an expected new war strategy until the New Year.

"The Iraq Study Group makes that clear'' that Iraq is a mess, Edwards told Matthews. "There is a desperate need for a change in policy. It is amazing to me and totally unacceptable that the president of the United States, after having led us there and created this mess, along with the help of others, is not taking responsibility to change course."

"The president has shown a complete inability to change and a complete incompetence in the management of the war in Iraq,'' said Edwards, who has come to believe that military force will not restore order in Iraq. "The idea that we can fix this with a military solution is absolute nonsense.''