TWO LAWYERS VS. TWO "BUSINESSMEN"

I would advise Bush-Cheney '04 to reconsider their tactic of smearing Kerry-Edwards as "two trial lawyers" vs. "two CEO businessmen." As a top prosecutor in Middlesex County, Kerry took on organized crime and put the Number Two mob boss in New England behind bars. He modernized the District Attorney's office, creating an innovative rape crisis crime unit, and as a lawyer in private practice he worked long and hard to prove the innocence of a man wrongly given a life sentence for a murder he did not commit. John Edwards, the "People's Lawyer," is "uniquely situated to refute Bush's attacks on trial lawyers and tort reform because he's the living embodiment of how a trial lawyer can serve a regulatory function in the face of misbehaving corporations, cities, and professionals. Indeed, attacking him is one of the surest ways for Bush to inadvertently highlight his own greatest vulnerability: the perception among voters that he's a shill for corporate America." (Read the whole article.)

George Bush, on the other hand, failed in every business undertaking he was ever associated with, the exception being his tiny stake in the Texas Rangers baseball club, which his cronies helped him parlay into a fortune. Dick Cheney's only business experience was with Halliburton, where his government and political connections were his only real contribution to the company, and which also made his personal fortune. It's hilarious to visit the Bush-Cheney '04 web site and read the two men's bios. W's skips from his graduation from Harvard Business School in 1975 to his work on his father's presidential campaign in '88 -- a failure to mention thirteen years of failures in business, always being financially rescued in one way or the other by friends or connections of his father. Cheney's resume, which begins with "a distinguished career in business and public service," completely fails to mention his only experience in business -- Halliburton, probably because it is currently a dirty word for most non-somnolent Americans.

I'll take the lawyers any day.