Edwards touts record as trial lawyer

Democrat John Edwards says his experience as a trial lawyer makes him the presidential contender best able to give voters hope — and to give the establishment grief.

Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, has focused his campaign on pledges to change a government system he says is rigged against most voters.

"While you shop (for candidates), I hope you will think about two key things: Who can you trust to tell you the truth about what's wrong in Washington, and who can you trust to fight like hell to make it right?" Edwards said during a town hall-style meeting Monday. "Those are the two things we need in the next president of the United States."

Edwards then turned to his background as a trial lawyer and work on behalf of plaintiffs.

"What I did was I gave them hope. And then I walked into that courtroom and I gave the company hell because they deserved it," he said. "That's the kind of fight we need. We need a president of the United States who will give you hope, who will stand up and fight for you to reclaim democracy. ... But we also need somebody who is ready for that fight, somebody who has been engaged in that fight. I've been in this fight my entire life. It didn't start last year. It didn't start in 2004."

Edwards said he is the candidate with a record of upsetting the system and standing firm.

"I won. I just didn't fight, I won and I won ... not just because I was right, but because I never gave up and I will never give up."

He also joked about the wealth his courtroom-based work gave him.

"Today, as many of you have heard, I don't live in a small house," he said to laughter.

Earlier Monday, Edwards appeared on New Hampshire Public Radio's morning show, "The Exchange," and said his Republican rivals who say they want to eliminate the estate tax are misleading voters.

"This is one of those cases where what they're saying is true, and the policy has nothing to do with what they are saying. It's a complete disconnect," he said. "Because as (a caller) just pointed out, as long as we have a four, five, six million dollar exemption — or seven, seven million dollar exemption — every small business and every small farm in America will pay no estate taxes. None. Zero. The people who are taxed are people with huge estates, people with two hundred, three hundred, four hundred million dollar estates."

A rival campaign said that in 2001, the then-senator opposed a measure that would have exempted estates smaller than $2 million and businesses valued at less than $3.4 million.

At present, estates worth up to $2 million this year and next will be exempt from the federal estate tax. Portions of estates above that threshold will be taxed at 45 percent. In 2009, the exemption level rises to $3.5 million, and by 2010 the estate tax will be repealed — but only for a year. Unless Congress changes the law, the tax returns in 2011 with an exemption threshold of only $1 million and a top tax rate of 55 percent.

At an afternoon round-table discussion with Manchester educators, Edwards said only an outsider could change the way Washington works, including President Bush's education policy.

"That crowd inside the Beltway in Washington thinks they know everything. ... They think everybody else out here in the world — me included — we're just a bunch of hicks who don't know what's going on," Edwards said. "Well, I got news for them: There's a lot of good, smart common sense out here in the real world. That crowd who thinks they know everything, those are the ones who said No Child Left Behind was going to be a wonderful, great panacea."

Edwards, who often mentions that his father was a millworker, visited Manchester's Millyard Museum, which is inside what used to be one of the world's largest textile mills, along the Merrimack River.

"I'm running for president on behalf of my father, who worked in mills all his life and never got the chances I've got," Edwards said, surrounded by displays of machinery and photos of mill-town life.

He said he also is running on behalf of the many women have approached him and his wife to talk about their battles with breast cancer.