Interviewing John Edwards

I interviewed John Edwards yesterday on a snowy Washington Sunday - a surprise snow of the sort that clings to everything and is another of God's reminders that one day all will be new again (and with no slush). Thank you for your questions - I got through as many as a I could.

A few quick impressions:

- He is a man familiar with suffering. He has profited handsomely from some of that suffering - his millions have come from judgments against doctors and companies whose negligence has hurt is clients. In doing that, however, he has also made millions for broken people. Have all the cases been legitimate? Has he ever gone to far? I don't know. But he has also experienced suffering first hand and it turned him to God. When his son died in a car crash in 1996 and when Elizabeth was diagnosed with cancer in 2004, he credits God - in an intimate way - with giving sustaining strength.

- His passion for poverty isn't faked. He has spent serious time in the poorest places on earth and speaks of poverty in that way that can't be faked - a way that is devoid of rosy idealism yet shot through with conviction...it is the way one talks about a disease that they are forced to face - resolutely.

- If I were Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton I would no more want to debate him than go skinny dipping in the Hudson River tomorrow. There is a reason he has made millions in a courtroom.

- The more Obama and Clinton rip each other apart the more attractive he becomes.

Pay attention to the interview because it may be with the next President of the United States - here is hoping that if that happens his campaign passion for the poor translates into even greater leadership passion because he will need it.