Barone on John Edwards

Michael Barone comments on POTUS wannabe John Edwards and poverty in America:

His stump speech includes a line about a little girl whose parents couldn't afford a winter coat. Give me a break. You can buy a little girl's winter coat at Wal-Mart for $10. That's the price of taking the little girl out to lunch at McDonald's. As Juan Williams points out in his book Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America�and What We Can Do About It, no one in America is stuck in poverty if he or she does three things: graduates from high school; gets a job, any job; refrains from having children before getting married. Poverty comes not from any structural failure of society but from dysfunctional behaviors. Edwards's poverty shtick is a crock.

Barone fails to mention that we have textile and clothing imports to thank for all those cheap coats.