Edwards Speech

Obama was a really hard act to follow, but John Edwards is doing a fantastic job of it. He's way stronger on foreign policy issues than I've seen him before. He's putting meat on the bones of the "exemplarism" concept and hitting, to me, a key point that's been all-too-absent from our politics, the need to think about how US foreign policy decisions look to the rest of the world. He directly made the contrast between the vast expenditures on Iraq and the good that kind of money could do -- both to the world and for America's image -- if that kind of commitment were made instead to real humanitarian causes.

Now he's moving on to global warming where he's always been good -- and, indeed, is just now getting huge applause -- so I'm gonna stop the post since I trust he'll be excellent again.

UPDATE: Okay, wait, now he's tacked back from climate change to the idea that major energy reform would create political reform in the Middle East. Then he links it up to a vision of development in Africa. You really need to hear it to believe it, because if I try to summarize it'll sound dumb, but Edwards talks about it very persuasively.