Edwards, Sacrificing SUVs, and $400 Haircuts

From ABC News 13, “Western North Carolina’s News Leader,” a web article titled, “Edwards: Americans should sacrifice their SUVs“

I quote the news story in its entirety:

Edwards: Americans should sacrifice their SUVs
August 29, 2007 07:46 EDT

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told a labor group he would ask Americans to make a big sacrifice: their sport utility vehicles.

The former North Carolina senator told a forum by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, yesterday he thinks Americans are willing to sacrifice.

Edwards says Americans should be asked to drive more fuel efficient vehicles. He says he would ask them to give up SUVs.

Edwards got a standing ovation when he said weapons and equipment used by America’s military needs to be made in the United States. He says tanks and ammunition for M16 rifles are being made in other countries.

He says jobs that provide equipment for America’s defense need to be made in the United States.

Fist of all, I’d like to point out what an awful reporting job this is. And I note that it has neither a by-line or any sort of attribution to a news service. Judging from the URL it’s a wire story but it’s unclear if the station pulled this story off the wires or wrote the original and is putting it out in the news service. Note the incorrect use of “by” instead of “of” in the second paragraph. Note that the last sentence/paragraph doesn’t even make sense. I think what the writer was intending to say was that equipment that provides for America’s defense needs to be made in the Unites States with American labor. But what really irks me about this news story is that there isn’t a single direct quote from John Edwards in the whole thing. How hard would it be to get a transcript of his speech and call out a quote or two to prove to us what he actually said?

But let’s take the article at face value for a minute. Let’s assume that the anonymous author accurate captured what John Edwards said in his speech.

First of all, the article twice says that Edwards would ask Americans to sacrifice/give up their SUVs. Why? Well the article doesn’t directly say. Indirectly, the article implies that the reason he wants Americans to sacrifice their SUVs is for fuel efficiency reasons because there is a sentence in there in which Edwards reportedly thinks Americans should drive more fuel efficient vehicles.

OK, fine. Let’s assume that we can put this gobbledey-gook of an article together and infer that John Edwards wants us to sacrifice SUVs for the sake of fuel efficiency. But fuel efficiency is not an end in itself. Why do we care about fuel efficiency? Is Edwards jumping on the Al Gore carbon neutral living band wagon? Is he jumping on the energy-independence-as-a-national-security-issue band wagon? We’re left to wonder.

Why is he targeting SUVs? Why do we have to sacrifice our SUVs instead of, oh i dunno, 22′ recreational vehicles? Why do we have to sacrifice SUVs instead of our V8 Cadiallac STS? Why do we have to sacrifice our SUVs instead of those land-yaht-sized convertibles? I bet I could name 20 common vehicles on the road that are just as bad or worse than SUVs. So why does Edwards single out SUVs? Does he think that if we eliminate SUVs all of our fuel efficiency woes will be solved? I doubt it, but you never know with John Edwards.

More likely, Edwards’ reference to SUVs was a rhetorical flourish, a synecdoche to represent all fuel inefficient cars. In that case, I’d have to ask, why use SUVs in this case? Why didn’t he say that he would ask Americans to give up their Caddies? Or their 22′ RVs? Perhaps he perceives SUV drivers are already hated by a segment of the population he’s trying to appeal to and he’s trying to fan the flames of that hatred to win the approval of that segment of the population.

The other thing that bothers me is the phrase “Americans are willing to sacrifice”. What does he think Americans are willing to sacrifice. Does he think non-SUV drivers are willing to require that SUV drivers give up their SUV for another car that meets with everyone else’s approval? Does he mean that _all_ Americans are willing to pay higher car prices for more fuel-efficient cars? Does he mean that _all_ Americans are willing to give up car safety as a trade-off for having lighter, more fuel efficient cares? Based on the story Edwards could mean that Americans are willing to either sacrifice their neighbor’s car, sacrifice their money, or sacrifice their family’s safety. There are probably other things “sacrifice” could be interpreted to mean. The point here is that Edwards does not specify or clarify what he thinks the sacrifice would be/need to be. Again without direct quotes from Edwards, we don’t know if this ambiguity is due to the content of Edwards’ speech or the poor reporting skills of the author.

Speaking of ambiguity, my biggest problem with this whole article is in the ambiguity of the word “ask.” Does he mean that he’s going to go house to house of every SUV-owning family in the United States, knock on the door, and politely suggest to the family that they trade in their SUV for a Prius? I’m sure Toyota would love that. But somehow I doubt that. His he going to include a section in his state of the union address to guilt trip people who own gas guzzlers? Maybe, but I doubt it. John Edwards is campaigning for the Democratic nomination for the President of the United States. So many people would assume that Edwards is making a policy speech. By that I mean, he is communicating to the American people how he would use his authority over the various departments in the Executive Branch and his influence on the legislative process to enact legislation and regulations that would force the country to do something about fuel efficiency. But Edwards doesn’t have the guts to actually tells us what his policy actions would be. In fact, by using the term “ask” he completely avoids having to take any meaningful action at all. He _could_ have said that he will urge congress to pass legislation to outlaw SUVs. He could have said he would said that he would require the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. There’s a thousand specific recommendations he could have made to address fuel efficiency issues. But he didn’t say _anything_ specific. By using the word “ask” and “sacrifice” in his speech he doesn’t commit himself to doing anything more than issuing a press release saying he wished Americans would buy more fuel efficient cars.

The reason all those muckraking news stories about Edwards’ vanity and all those wanton stories about his opulent lifestyle stick to him like glue is that, as snarky as they are, they are actually _more_ substantive than anything else Edwards says/does on the campaign trail. If Edwards went on record with a specific, significant policy statement like, “Within my first year as President, I’ll require the NHTSA to raise CAFE standards by 20% with a 4 year deadline for the industry to meet those new standards” I betcha we would immediately stop hearing about $400 haircuts, because he’d finally give us all something to talk about, something meaningful to debate.