MAIL CALL: KERRY-EDWARDS: 'JUST WHAT THE COUNTRY

The Democratic Dream Team

Those of our readers who are John Kerry supporters were thrilled by the choice of John Edwards as his running mate, the subject of our July 19 cover. "Senator Edwards brings a fresh, dynamic perspective to a tired and worn political landscape," one said. Enthused another, "A John-John Democratic ticket combines one senator's experience and another's dynamism, which is just what the country needs." One compared the duo with the current White House occupants, commenting that it was "refreshing to see the relaxed, confident smiles of Kerry-Edwards on your cover after three and a half years of the smirking, arrogant posturing of Bush-Cheney." Opponents, of course, thought otherwise. One, noting the candidates' experience as lawyers, said, "These guys are outstanding at telling juries what they want to hear." Another scoffed, " 'The Sunshine Boys'? How about calling them who they really are: 'Billionaire and Millionaire'?"

I must confess I had a sleepless night on the eve of John Kerry's veep announcement, and I screamed with glee when the news came from my television ("The Sunshine Boys?" July 19). I see in John Edwards another John F. Kennedy. I see the future of America--the America we once were: a nation that represented liberty and opportunity for all and was respected globally. John Kerry, as president, will restore all this and more. I believe in him, heart and soul. I am deeply distressed with George W. Bush's leadership. He inflated intelligence to justify war; he has weakened the economy and has turned the previous administration's surplus into a huge deficit. On Election Day I will proudly vote for Kerry and Edwards. They have my complete support.
Michelle Hollingsworth
Parkland, Fla.

With the selection of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as his running mate, John Kerry has chosen someone who brings to the ticket qualities he does not possess. Edwards is a Southerner; a charming, charismatic, effusive, empathetic man of personality and animation; a candidate with boyish good looks; one who can disagree without being disagreeable and hateful; a self-made man born into a family of modest means. But along with his positive attributes, Edwards brings a glaring liability: he is a fabulously wealthy trial lawyer, one who is against tort reform, and thereby squarely for the continuing calamity of our increasingly unaffordable colossus, the health-care system, which--through the awarding of absurd punitive damages--enriches attorneys and plain-tiffs beyond all reason. It will be fascinating to observe how Kerry will continue to pledge to work for affordable health care for all Americans when his running mate has worked so hard to deny it to us.
Oren M. Spiegler
Upper St. Clair, Pa.

The Kerry-Edwards ticket is a breath of fresh air for us war-weary Americans. From their down-home family group picture to their positive campaign rhetoric, they give us a vision of the American Dream that's been missing for too long. Kerry and Edwards are giving us back our optimism and offering America a real hope for the future.
Lois Hendricks
Arcadia, Fla.

For the past two years at least, John Kerry and others have been bashing President Bush about his purportedly avoiding military service; about being wrong, deceitful, clueless and warmongering, and about lying to everyone in America. On and on the negativism has poured forth. Now I read in NEWSWEEK and hear from other news sources how the Democrats will be taking the high road and conducting a positive convention and campaign. Can you say "flip-flop"? I sure can.
George Minns
Stillwater, Minn.

The real issue in the campaign is not optimism, but substance versus style. So far the public has been treated to a John Kerry who is optimistic about America but doesn't tell us much about his policies. What Americans want are answers to gasoline prices well over $2, milk up 50 cents a gallon, continuous unemployment and some non-VA patients forced to buy medicine from Canada so they won't have to pay double. I hope Kerry and John Edwards will realize that America needs more substantial answers and fewer stylish descriptions. Otherwise we will be in for another warmed-over campaign.
Anthony Mirante
Philadelphia, Pa.

"The sunshine boys?" shouldn't be a question. Kerry and Edwards are the sunshine for which our country and the world are in desperate need. Four years of "gloom and doom" is more than enough!
Carter Richards
via internet

No sooner did John Kerry name John Edwards his running mate than the Republican assertions began that Edwards was, in fact, Kerry's second choice--the implication being that Kerry's good friend and fellow Vietnam veteran Sen. John McCain was his first preference. That may be, but such criticism might have more credibility if Dick Cheney had been candidate Bush's first choice for VP as well. Lest we forget, Cheney was appointed to head the search for vice president and ultimately landed the job himself.
Norman L. Bender
Woodbridge, Conn.

It is absurd to assert on your cover that Kerry is betting on "the politics of optimism." Kerry's campaign is based on rooting for two things: a slowdown in the U.S. economy and our failure in Iraq. It is hard to recall a noteworthy major policy initiative Kerry has offered. Instead he has been remarkably adept at inventing ways to attack and insult President Bush without offering any important positive initiatives.
Robert E. Grady
San Francisco, Calif.

Reading about John and Elizabeth Edwards was like experiencing a spiritual reawakening. The stress of hearing about the war, the economy and the false issue of so-called values was almost enough to make me throw up my hands in despair. I now feel rejuvenated by the spirit of these fine people, who have been dealt the tragedy of losing a child and are going forward with grace and dignity.
Janet W. Bilderbeck
Jemez Springs, N.M.

Misguided Entry Into War?

President Bush seems to be in denial about the results of the 500-page bipartisan Senate report, described by Michael Isikoff, and its conclusion that virtually every major claim his administration used to justify the invasion of Iraq was either wrong or exaggerated ( " 'The Dots Never Existed'," July 19). He believes the war was justified to make America safer. If Bush does not learn from his mistake and repeats it or, worse, if Americans embrace the idea of putting another people at wrongful risk of injury or death to "secure" our way of life, then history may well judge Bush's presidency the worst that ever was.
M. J. Lamson
Cary, N.C.

George W. Bush was wrong, try as he might to blame "faulty intelligence" for the invasion of Iraq. The CIA official's words "Let's keep in mind that this war's going to happen regardless..." in the Senate intelligence report are glaringly incriminating. Bush can maintain a thousand times that we were right to invade Iraq and still not bring back the more than 900 American soldiers who have died as a result of his war of choice. Bush was wrong, tragically wrong.
Del Cardillo
Santa Barbara, Calif.

Single Mom, Many Worries

As a teacher in a lower-income area of Sacramento, I see many mothers raising their children alone ("Raising a Son--With Men on the Fringes," my turn, July 19). I also see many grandmothers who have taken on the task of raising their grandchildren. One statement of Robyn Marks's struck me as all-important: "I still realize that at the end of the day, everything Jason is, everything he trusts about who and what he can become, will come from me." If every parent, single or not, realized and acted on that premise, our nation's children would have a hopeful and productive future. Parenting is an awesome, never-ending, daunting responsibility, no matter what your color or economic status. It doesn't take just love to be a good parent; it takes time, selflessness and expectations. Every child deserves to have someone who believes in him or her, someone who is willing and able to sacrifice to be proactive in the life of that child. It seems to me that Marks is up to the task.
Anne Taylor
Fair oaks, Calif.

As someone who was raised by his mother alone from the age of 5, I read with great empathy and interest Robyn Marks's my turn. I was impressed and heartened by Marks's careful and apparently selfless planning regarding her son's current and future trials. But her son's story probably won't be like mine. I went to public school, where I was able to experience various cultures represented by my many friends and classmates. The money my mother saved from not sending me to private school allowed her to have a job that didn't require her to leave me for days. The "Generation-X child[ren] of hip-hop" have nothing on the smoking-drinking-partying, Rat Pack-inspired lifestyle of my parents' generation, a lifestyle my mother chose to end with my father's death at 39. At that point she went to work in a job that got her home as I was leaving school so that I would not be left in after-school care. "General bling" was that spark of recognition won at school from academic achievement, not jewelry (which she didn't flaunt and I didn't want). Like Marks, my mom was bolstered by her faith, but she knew her real work was to be at all my various concerts and sporting events, as well as to peek in on me every night as I slept.
Paul Witt
Culver City, Calif.

Let me get this straight: Robyn Marks is a single mother who lives in suburban Maryland, plans to send her son to a $20,000-per-year private school and frets about his future because they're African-American and we readers are supposed to feel sorry for her? Tell that to the single moms, mostly African-American, who lodge several weeks a year with their children at my church in Philadelphia because they have no home. Talk about middle-class whining.
Rodney Chonka
Philadelphia, Pa.

In 1982 my husband's employer transferred him out of state. For six months I was a "single" mother to a 15-year-old daughter. Whenever I was at my wit's end I could pick up the phone and call my husband, whose reinforcement and support helped tremendously. Since then I have had great respect, admiration and empathy for any single mother. If all mothers had Robyn Marks's courage, awareness and understanding, our children's and this country's future would look much brighter.
Barbara E. Hoffman
Burnsville, N.C.