December 29, 2006
After weeks of speculation, former North Carolina senator and ex-VP candidate John Edwards made his official announcement that he's jumping into the 2008 race to the White House. He chose New Orleans to make his announcement because he says it best typifies his hackneyed “Two Americas.”
This divisive campaign message pits the haves against the have-nots. Edwards is, unquestionably, one of the former. His net worth is reported to be $30 million. His Washington home recently sold for $5.6 million. He now resides in a 10,000 square-foot mansion on a 100-acre estate in Chapel Hill , North Carolina .
“It's one thing to be a millionaire,” one Democratic operative told the New York Post, “but it's totally tone-deaf to be using Katrina victims while you're putting the finishing touches on your multimillion-dollar mansion.” And that's the point. I certainly don't begrudge John Edwards for being successful. Quite the contrary. I think we all strive, or should strive, to be successful. Success, however, isn't always measured in wealth and that's where Edwards completely misses the boat.
I entered the field of radio with no intention of storing up riches. I got into the business because it was something I loved. I have been immensely blessed. Sure, I've achieved some measure of success, but my blessing has been in the form of happiness. I can only count a handful of days in my nearly 30 years in the business that I did not want to come to work. You can't buy that kind of satisfaction.
Yet, John Edwards continues to look at America through the warped prism of money. He touts the minimum wage as the panacea for America 's ills when less than a million Americans, many of them teenagers, are making just $5.15 per hour. Having started off in the business making $6,000 per year, I can tell you that poverty is a great motivator. The last thing we need to do to people is make them comfortable in their poverty through some government edict. Edwards, of all people, should understand that only hard work and personal motivation will ever make anyone truly successful.
Time was in this country when people who didn't have much were still happy. Looking back over my career, I was just as happy when I first started out as I am now. I'm certainly more satisfied with my career these days, not because I make more money, but because I've achieved more through hard work and determination. Giving people money does not make them successful, nor does it make them happy. It simply robs them of their dignity and that's why so many people who find themselves on government dependency are miserable. That's the part of the “Two Americas” equation John Edwards has failed to grasp.
There are two Americas , alright. There are those who work hard, who dream big, who live life to its fullest. Their success is not measured by their bank account. It's measured by how free they are to dream. It's measured by how unencumbered they are to achieve. It's measured by the satisfaction in knowing they are the masters of their own destiny. Then there are those who hold out their hands, complain loudly, expect the government to give them something and who are completely discontented. It's not a division of the haves and have-nots. It's a division of the wills and the will-nots.
Sure, we should take care of those among us who cannot take care of themselves. But the worst thing we can do for those able to achieve is to rob them of the satisfaction of creating their own success.