The wife of the democratic vice presidential candidate has spent four days campaigning in Iowa this month alone, and on Sunday, Elizabeth Edwards let reporters hear her frustrations. Former Vice President Spiro Agnew uttered his infamous “nattering naybobs of negativism” quote during a speech in Des Moines over three decades ago. While Mrs. Edwards wasn’t as venomous or alliterative as Agnew, she did accuse the media of paying attention to the wrong things. Edwards said the Kerry/Edwards campaign is competing for time against “a bunch of lies,” what’s happening in the Scott Peterson murder trial in California and “whatever the latest Michael Jackson story is.” Mrs. Edwards unleashed her frustrations during an interview Sunday evening in Indianola, after she spoke at Senator Tom Harkin’s annual steak fry. “I’d love to have the press’s support in bringing to the forefront of the discussion the things that are actually going to make a difference in people’s lives as opposed to the rest of this nonsense which doesn’t matter, frankly, at all,” Edwards said. She recently tapped into the Glamour magazine’s forum on the Internet, and found the women chatting there were frustrated by the campaign because they couldn’t tell where the candidates stood on issues like the environment, education and abortion. Edwards said she’s talking about those things every single day, as are her husband and John Kerry, but “it’s not being covered” by the media. Edwards concedes that the National Enquirer was created around the concept that people will “slow down to look at the train wreck” rather than be attracted to serious substance. Edwards says politicians who “sloganeer” without providing detailed answers bear some responsibility for the state of the campaign coverage, and “maybe the public does, too,” because of the type of news it consumes.
