Does Edwards have what it takes?

By Joe Hagan

updated 3:59 p.m. ET Aug. 31, 2007

The hair, up close, is peppered with tiny strands of blond. Chestnut brown and so finely trimmed, mellifluous, smooth, and feathery, it could almost be a weave, the Platonic ideal as imagined by the Hair Club for Men. Along with the piercing blue eyes, slashing V-shaped smile, and a shimmering burgundy shirt tucked into stonewashed Levi's resting low on the hips, the hair completes the man: John Edwards, a populist Adonis, a golden god of a Southern Democrat.

But on a spring Friday in sleepy Adel, Iowa, as Edwards stands surrounded by pale, stern-faced farmers in plaid shirts and modestly coiffed housewives, the hair is looking a little too good. The news that he paid $400 to have it trimmed by a Beverly Hills stylist broke yesterday and now wafts across this makeshift meeting hall in a pizza joint. For the campaign, it's an unwelcome reminder of what people suspect to be Edwards's main weakness: a certain lightness of being that dovetails all too well with that viral YouTube video of the candidate preening for two minutes before a TV appearance. It's especially unfortunate given that the 54-year-old former senator from North Carolina is here to explain his plans for rural America, the things he'll do as president of the United States to make life better for working farmers and farm families. It's the hair versus the message and, at this moment, it's hard to know which will win.

Edwards paces the small platform, explaining how he'll fight corporate farming, funnel capital to rural schools and businesses, and expand broadband access to out-of-the-way places. The rural South is where he's from, after all—the town of Robbins, North Carolina, population 1,200. In America, he says, "people like me can come from nowhere, the son of a mill worker…and now be running for president of the United States and pay $400 for a haircut!"

The Iowans erupt in laughter, a great gale of relief. "You like that, do you?" Edwards says, grinning. A white-haired 56-year-old named Marilyn, who had noted beforehand that $400 haircuts are "harder for people from the Midwest to understand," turns and gives a furtive thumbs-up. "He's good!" she whispers. Indeed he is. By the time he's updated the crowd on his wife Elizabeth's battle with cancer and uttered his can't-lose, heat-seeking campaign line—"It's time for Americans to be patriotic about something other than war!"—Edwards has won over the room, totally and completely. Asked about the haircut by the Iowa press afterward, Edwards, hand on hip, eyes squinting in the sun, says, "My whole life has been spent standing up for people who have no voice, and I'll do that as long as I'm alive. It's a ridiculous amount of money for a haircut. I'm actually embarrassed by it."

The honesty is disarming, especially since the Beverly Hills stylist Joseph Torrenueva has already said that Edwards is a "longtime client"—it's no accident that he got a $400 haircut; he just got busted. But whatever: Edwards has transformed embarrassing news into a punch line and a moment of plainspoken humanity. For now, the message has won.

Less money, less star power
With less money and less star power than Democratic front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Edwards may look like a long shot to win his party's nomination. That's why he's been putting all his chips on the Iowa caucus, where a primary win in January 2008 could give him enough momentum to push through any possible Super Tuesday scenario on February 5. Again and again, I watch Edwards get thronged by moon-eyed supporters in Iowa — veterans, housewives, students, and union workers moved to goose bumps by his speeches, trying to touch the hem of his suit or look him in the eye with a personal message about Iraq or health care (a look Edwards returns with eyes narrowed earnestly, head cocked slightly to the side). He has by far the most established campaign organization in Iowa of any of the candidates, having first surged to national prominence there in 2004 and made 23 visits since then. By May, he was still number one in the Iowa polls, with 27 percent of Democrats supporting him.

What the Democrats of Iowa want, of course, is someone who can win in a general election. The dark cloud of Elizabeth's returning cancer has added Oprah-worthy drama—and a shade of uncertainty—to the campaign. But as Edwards has said, it's no reason to vote for him (or not to vote for him). As much as he declares himself the antidote to George W. Bush, it's what he shares with the Texan—known for whacking brush in Crawford and using Lone Star State grammar instead of what he learned at Andover and Yale—that could be his best hope for winning: Southern authenticity.

FirstPerson: You & the campaign trail Do you have photos or videos of John Edwards or any of the 2008 contenders? If you captured a candidate on camera, we want to see it. Send us your pictures and videos, and we'll post the best on MSNBC.com. Click here.

It's the "thang," as Edwards pronounces it in his hickory-smoked twang, that he believes lends him the innate credibility to connect with regular folks. It's also crucial to his strategy: As a guy who grew up going to a Baptist church, spent summers sweeping the floors of the Milliken textile plant where his dad once toiled for $35 a week, lettered in football in high school, and graduated from North Carolina State, Edwards promises he can peel away stubborn electoral votes from the Republican-dominated South—a feat that centrist Bill Clinton barely managed in the nineties with a Southern running mate. (Clinton won Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Georgia in 1992 and won those states again minus Georgia in 1996.) Before that, you have to go back to Jimmy Carter, who in 1976 swept every state in the region except Virginia.

During a campaign stop in Charleston, South Carolina, where he spoke to the local longshoremen's union, Edwards tells me it was "impossible" for Massachusetts senator John Kerry to win in the South in 2004, given Bush's Southern bona fides. Edwards says he has that same advantage now. "And on the other side, it looks like at this moment, very likely, not somebody from the South." (That is, if Republican Fred Thompson of Tennessee and Law & Order hasn't entered the race.) That's no small selling point: If Edwards were to win the same states he and Kerry won, plus either Ohio or Florida and just one other Southern state, the Democrats would retake the White House.

But in the South, Edwards's good looks and polished oratory can sometimes obscure what's credible about him. And as Edwards himself observes in Four Trials, his 2004 book about fighting courtroom battles for children and families with personal injury, juries "rarely miss a trick, and probably never when it really is a trick. They take in every movement, fact, word, hesitation, and glance." Add to that $400 haircuts—not to mention the palatial house that he and his wife recently finished building outside Chapel Hill. With Edwards polling third among Democrats in South Carolina, where he was actually born (he moved to North Carolina when he was 12), he needs to prove he's got more than just a genuine accent—that, in fact, the heartfelt message and the perfect messenger are one and the same.

MORE FROM POLITICS

Politics Section Front

Abortion could roil Senate health care debate High court looks at life in prison for juveniles Obama marks win, but challenges mount Advice for Obama: Knock heads on health care Palin says she’s back on Twitter   Israeli prime minister calls for peace talks GOP says Dems put agenda ahead of country House Roll Call: Health care 2010 elections: Democratic fears, GOP hopes NYC mayor not humbled by close election Politics Section Front   Add Politics headlines to your news reader: