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by Southern Housewife

Created on: July 02, 2007   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

John Edwards has tremendous credibility when he speaks of two Americas; he has lived in both of them. He was not "born to the manor," he was born to the small clapboard shack in a textile mill village; he was a linthead.

Loose your job, loose your home; living in a mill village meant living in a small rented house owned by the textile mill where you worked. It meant buying groceries from a store owned by the mill, attending school built by the mill, and adhering to the mill's rules for community living, including not-so-subtle pressure to vote the way mill owners suggested. Southern textile mill workers were not unionized; Mill owners owned the mill, and in many respects "owned" or at least controlled nearly every aspect of their workers' lives.

Growing up, both Edwards' parents worked to make ends meet. Edwards watched his Dad struggle to advance in the mill. It didn't matter whether his father worked longer, harder, or more productively, the better jobs and promotions went first to those with more education. Even without money or power, Edwards understood education was an equalizer, and education was the best chance he had to make a future for himself.

Edwards was the first person in his family to go to college. In 1974, just two years after President Nixon's historic visit to China to open trade relations, Edwards graduated with a degree from North Carolina State University in textile technology. Few could predict the textile industry, the South's economic lifeline since Reconstruction, was on its way to collapse. One by one textile mills were "outsourced" to China's cheap labor leaving people who knew nothing but mill work their entire life cut adrift with families to feed and few transferable job skills. With the future of textiles in the South in decline, Edwards decided to go to law school. In 1977, he graduated, with honors, from law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and married Elizabeth.

When John Edwards began his legal career he was anything but the darling of high finance and corporate America, he was a personal injury trial lawyer representing the kind of people he had grown up with on the mill hills. He represented the sick, the poor, and the helpless against insurance companies and large corporations.

Just seven years out of law school, Edwards took the kind of case no seasoned lawyer wanted to touch and turned it into a $3.7 million dollar verdict for his client. John Edwards went on to become one of the most successful trial attorneys in the United States. Local reporters called Edwards' courtroom arguments "the most impressive legal performance I have ever seen."

The odds of a young man growing up in mill villages and going to college were slim, but the odds of such a man going on to become one of the wealthiest, most successful trial attorneys in the nation are infinitesimal. Why could John Edwards get up in front of a jury and win multi-million dollar verdicts, one right after another against some of the most skilled defense attorneys representing some of the largest corporations in the country? Perhaps the "fire in his belly" came from his background and what he had seen growing up. He and his family knew firsthand what it was like to be under the thumb of large corporations with no semblance of equal bargaining power. Perhaps his humble beginnings enabled him to identify personally with the injured and downtrodden; poignantly realizing his advocacy was the only chance those he represented would ever have to redress their injury and loss.

There has been so much unkind publicity about John Edwards' $400 haircut. Have you ever been over-charged or had someone take advantage of you? I have. In the case of a haircut, realistically what could Edwards have done? It is not as if you can return a haircut or undo it. Like most everyone who gets a hair cut, he was probably given the bill only after the service had been rendered. Should he have obtained an estimate prior to engaging barber services? Granted women's hair styling is more expensive, but my last haircut with color, including tip cost $150 without product purchase. It was one of the better salons in our area, but it wasn't Vidal Sassoon himself.

The cost of hair care may be higher for a presidential candidate or other high profile clients, particularly if special arrangements are required to assure the candidate's privacy and security. Maybe it is appropriate for a high profile client such as a presidential candidate to pay for the salon's lost revenue if the salon clears its schedule to assure the high profile client's privacy. Who wants to see a presidential candidate on YouTube or Entertainment Tonight getting a shampoo or sitting under a diffuser with tin foil and curlers? Finally, if Edwards had argued about the bill or refused to pay it, the headline would have read,
"Multi-millionaire Presidential Candidate John Edwards Stiffs Barber over Cost of Haircut."

John Edwards came from a loving, functional two-parent family. He was just like the other kids whose parents worked in the mill, growing up in their tiny, rented houses only yards away from each other, and only one paycheck or lay-off from homelessness and poverty. There are many politicians born into wealthy families with only a "drive by" acquaintance with the lifestyles of the working poor. There are other politicians who worked their way up from humble beginnings; however, many of them seem to have made most of their financial strides only after assuming political office. John Edwards worked hard, rose above his circumstances, and made his fortune before running for political office.

Regardless of one's political persuasion or presidential candidate preference, it is only fair to acknowledge the story of John Edwards is the rags to riches American Dream. He may be the only candidate from either major party to actually stare poverty in the eye and crawl out. Realistically, John Edwards has nothing to prove. Many in his position would simply retire to the beautiful mountain home to enjoy time with his wife and children. It may be because he so closely identifies with the poor and struggling and believes he has something positive to offer that he and his family are willing to endure a Presidential campaign, particularly at a time when a haircut meets with more concern than the urgent foreign and domestic issues facing our nation.

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