The following piece was produced for HuffPost's OffTheBus.
Producer's Note: The author of this essay is a fixture in the New Hampshire Democratic scene, and a highly regarded grassroots activist in the state. He is supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton in the NH Primary.
I seldom criticize a fellow Democrat publicly, but John Edwards' recent attacks against Hillary Clinton have gone way over the line. In particular I'm talking about his response to the "question planting" incident in Iowa. If there is anyone in the blogosphere who hasn't heard about it, a Clinton staffer urged a college student to ask Senator Clinton a generic question about global warming. After investigating, the Clinton campaign acknowledged that in fact one staffer did ask one student to ask one absolutely innocuous question.
The Edwards campaign has taken this incident out of context and spun it into something diabolical. The issue here isn't nastiness. The issue is Edwards' sudden lapse into hypocrisy. I've worked on a lot of New Hampshire campaigns. They are the closest thing to an Iowa campaign. All sorts of unexpected things happen at campaign events. Candidates are at the mercy of grandstanders, bird-doggers, You-Tubers, agenda obsessed zealots, the criminally insane and Lyndon Larouche's cult of youthful zombies. All of which makes a controlled event impossible unless you run one like a fortress a la George Bush. I've protested outside a Bush event and its martial law all the way. John Edwards knows all of this.
John Edwards also knows that campaign staffers are young, enthusiastic, overworked and underpaid. Often they get caught up in playing hero when their candidate comes to town. That's a lot more fun than canvassing and phone banking. They want to do something wonderful for their candidate. Instead they do something stupid. A staffer might conceivably see a pretty girl and try to impress her with feigned access to his candidate. It's all happened at one time or another.
Retail campaigning is nuts. That's why it's so much fun, and that's why you won't see a top tier candidate capitalize on opponents' staffers' mistakes very often in a primary. There is an unwritten code for good reason --it can happen to anybody. Blowing an isolated incident out of proportion is disingenuous by default.
John Edwards has not only ignored the code. In his efforts to sully the character of Hillary Clinton, he has stooped to deception. It's working. Hundreds of bloggers nationwide are amplifying this right now. From Daily Kos to Blue New Hampshire you can see the same cut and paste thread. And thousands of Hillary-bashing Democrats are using language that should be reserved for the likes of Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Tom Delay, Dick Cheney and George Bush.
Ah, but that's the frame:
Hillary is just like George Bush! Planting questions at a rally proves it!
John Edwards got the ball rolling himself with this line to reporters in Iowa:
"George Bush goes to events that are staged, where people are screened, where they're only allowed to ask questions if the questions are favorable to George Bush."
Then Senator Edwards' Communications Director Chris Kofinis included this gem in a press release: "It appears the Clinton campaign has adopted a new strategy of planting questions,"
That's what I find hypocritical. Edwards is using a classic Karl Rove technique of character destruction here. Guilt by association. He's also taking an isolated incident --one out of hundreds of campaign events--and turned it into Clinton policy.
What isn't isolated is the Edwards campaign's willingness to capitalize on Hillary bashing. I've watched this coming for a long time. I get a lot of e-mails back channel and read the blogs and there has never been a muffler on the anti-Hillary rants amongst some of Edwards' troops.
I also saw Edwards attack Hillary Clinton at the first Democratic Debate held here in June at St. Anselm College. I was there live. Following the debate I wrote, " None of the big three hurt themselves in my opinion. Edwards did risk taking some jabs at Hillary. It made me just a little uncomfortable, but he got away with it I think."
I find all of this pretty disappointing. I've met John Edwards face to face on a number of occasions. I've seen him speak many times. He is eloquent, especially on the issue of poverty. I've liked him since the 2004 campaign when I was a very active volunteer with Howard Dean. If I hadn't have worked for Dean I would have worked for Senator Edwards. Some very close friends of mine are working for him here in New Hampshire and I helped them out at one large Edwards event on a very cold day last January. I know that he is a sincere and good man and I know that he is in a make or break situation in Iowa .
But Senator Edwards and attack dog bloggers should think twice right now. As this stuff makes the rounds of the Internet they are creating rifts that will carry over into the general election. Another uniter turns into a divider.
This could be John Edward's legacy if he isn't careful.