TJ Walker breaks down how John Edwards could rebuild his public image after scandal. He recommends disappearing for a while, then doing sustained, visible work helping poor and homeless people at scale, not token appearances. Walker points to Chuck Colson, Bill Clinton, and Eliot Spitzer as examples of partial comebacks.
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From New York, here's T.J. walker. So how can John Edwards rehabilitate his image? Because let's face it, he's about as popular as Saddam Hussein right now. He has been thoroughly discredited. Basically everybody hates him. What can someone like that do to recover his image? Well, my first recommendation would be do nothing for about a year. Go hide on a desert island, go to the wilderness, go camping across South America. People need some time to just not see your face, not hear your name, just recover a little bit. There's some John Edwards fatigue out there. Number two, when you do re emerge, you have to be seen as doing something that is completely selfless, that's not self serving, that's not phony. Now for John Edwards, here's a man who's already fabulously wealthy, doesn't really seem to be motivated to go out and be a big businessman. So there's no need to be doing things to make money. He needs to be doing something that seems entirely altruistic, where he is helping people and it needs to be consistent with something he's about. He needs to be seen as helping poor people. That was the theme of a lot of his political campaigns. And he needs to be seen doing this in a way that doesn't benefit him directly. Now, if he does this and does it well, he can rehabilitate his image. Chuck Colson was a Watergate felon and yet did restore his image, at least in the eyes of many, through his 35 years plus of helping poor criminals in prisons all over America. Not exactly a glamorous position. John Edwards needs to do something else like that. It could be helping homeless people, it could be helping the very poorest in our country, but he needs to be seen as doing something. And at an institutional level, I don't think he can get away with just showing up once a month with a hammer at a Habitat for Humanity. He needs to use the resources he has, the power, the scale, the influence to create an organization that really helps people. Think of Bill Clinton's global initiatives. Not that long ago, Bill Clinton's name, let's say it had some negatives after the Monica Lewinsky situation, the impeachment. And yet today, Bill Clinton is seen as a statesman around the world held in extraordinarily high respect because he's constantly doing things, constantly generating new media coverage in a positive arena. John Edwards can do this too, and sometimes it can happen fairly quickly. Look at Elliot Spitzer, former disgraced governor of New York. Took a little time out, then became a pundit. Then used that to leverage his position as a TV talk show host. John Edwards could do the same thing, although he doesn't really seem to have the policy wonkishness that Elliot Spitzer has and what you would need to be a political pundit. I think his role has got to be more in the non profit sector, specifically helping homeless, the most impoverished, doing something where he seems selfless. The next thing he's got to do is ignore the critics. There are going to be critics no matter what John Edwards does, saying he's only doing this because he's just trying to worm his way back into public office and he's inauthentic and he doesn't believe it. He's going to have to just ignore those critics and day in and day out, do good works, get publicity, and eventually over time, the good works, the good messages, the good image will outweigh the bad. Now, I don't think he can ever rehabilitate his image to the point where he can run for elective office and win. It's doubtful in the next decade he could rehabilitate his image to the point of getting approved for a presidential cabinet, but he certainly could be a major, major player on this national and international stage if he plays his cards right. So I for one am not willing to count out John Edwards yet. Doesn't mean I think he's a great guy or I'm condoning him. But he does still have a future. He seems quite vigorous, healthy, relatively young, he's rich and he has a lot of time on his hands. So he's going to have to do something. I'm TJ Walker from Media Training Worldwide.
