A storm of criticism has hit the Edwards camp over the presidential candidate’s lifestyle choices. Depending on whom you talk to, it’s none of our business how he spends his money or it’s every American’s business to find clues as to how he would lead the country toward a more equitable planet share. Climate change, sustainability, consumption, and environmental protection will be big in 2008. Maybe not as big as war, but right up there behind it.
Another issue is whether a Democrat who has chosen to run on a “poverty platform” has an obligation not to rub his money in the faces of the poor, as in the heated walkway between wings valued just under $200,000, which might have built four houses in New Orleans, where Edwards announced his primary campaign.
It is worth noting that every candidate can expect to be tested on “green value,” including General Clark, if he decides to run. Clark’s overall commitment to sustainability can be evaluated by reading this website, but his personal “carbon footprint” is something any Clark for President campaign is going to have to set forth, it would appear.
In Edwards’s case, the story originated with what turns out to be a right wing website, John Locke Foundation and a Carolina Journal piece published a few days ago, before making its way to political discussion sites, left and right. Subsequently, telling truth from spin or “green wash,” may prove tough. (Was it 50,000 trees clear cut from the building site? We do not know.) The Edwardses responded with a blog entry by Mrs. Edwards on the campaign website. Mrs. Edwards discussed, among other green things, but not trees, how they are phasing out incandescent lightbulbs from the house. She also avowed they had a “foremost name in green architecture” design the place.
A detailed article appeared yesterday in the News Observer, in which she is quoted: “This house is a truly fabulous family home. The house has one fireplace, no grand staircase.” The single level 28,200 square foot house has a 600 square foot bedroom over the two-car guest garage to which the grand staircase, if there was one, presumably could lead. In the News Observer piece, John Edwards said of the new house, it “isn’t an image problem.”
A very, very large view here, which is sure to cause image problems.
While we cannot provide you with the General’s “carbon footprint,” we can show you a picture of his house in Little Rock, which is 4000 square feet and worth about $350,000 in 2004. Like the Edwards house, it has columns on the porch.
The General for President 2008 
