There was a backlash of populism building in the country.

But if Kerry's foot was stuck in his mouth, if Hillary was unelectable, Obama untested, Vilsack a nobody and Bayh a suitable supermarket manager at best -- how could it also be that John Edwards, who had shown promise in his own blue-collar presidential campaign of 2004, was offering little more than bedtime cliches to a world gone mad?

And yet there he was up onstage at the Carter Center last Friday night, sharing his own version of It Takes a Village to an already disgruntled crowd.

"Home is not about houses," the former North Carolina senator intoned. "It's about the environment in which we grew up."

It looked like it was going to be a broken play. Then a man stepped up to the microphone a little later and told Edwards he doubted his daughter would inherit a world better than the one in which he was raised -- and the old Edwards was back.

He said he was optimistic about America's future -- but without the right leadership the country would continue to drift, as would the world.

"We have stratified economic class in America," Edwards said. "We have a tax system that greatly favors capital. Capital and education are mobile, and everything else is not. Whatever we do domestically is built into a global economy and as such it's very difficult to move up."

Soon, he said, China is going to become the largest English-speaking country on the planet. One-half of China's college graduates major in science and math. This power translates into policy that should be offensive to American values. China, Edwards said, is propping up the Sudanese government, "which is paying the Janjaweed to perpetuate genocide."

The former senator said America's best shot at competitiveness is to establish economic fairness for its own citizens. He reiterated his point from earlier in the day when he spoke at Georgia Tech: A fundamental aspect of good foreign policy is good domestic policy, starting with providing health care to 47 million Americans now uninsured.

"Starbucks has more money in health care than in coffee beans," he said. "It is dumb not to do something about this dysfunctional health care system."

The next president, "whoever that is," will have to restore America's role in the world by recommitting the country to its core values, Edwards said. Although we have some differences with European countries, he pointed out, we essentially share a values system. That's not the case with Russia and China.

"When you don't have a values-based relationship, we have to negotiate every detail with these countries," he said. "The result is that they constantly wander off the reservation."

The problem with American foreign policy today, Edwards said, is that America lacks the moral credibility to enforce its own treaties, and to help direct the political development of countries at the crossroads of democracy and autocracy. When a morally weakened America challenges Russia's move toward autocracy, for example, the Russians' reaction is "How dare you challenge us? Look what you're doing in Abu Ghraib. Look at Guantanamo."

America disconnected from international law, indeed, disconnected from its own values, is tantamount to greater disorder worldwide. "We give defenses to those countries moving in the wrong direction," Edwards said.

The former senator's appearance at the Carter Center occurred against the backdrop of a shifting American political landscape, in which Democrats won control of both houses of the U.S. Congress on Nov. 7.

But even before he arrived there was a mood of disappointment in the packed, mostly Democratic Party crowd. Edwards was late, a fact that caused a flurry of anxiety among the Carter Center staff. There was also the matter of the book itself, a $30 coffee table cut-and-paste job that had anyone doubting Edwards' foreign-policy credentials doubting them double-time. With more pictures than text, more contributions by actors than scientists and philosophers, the book had the Oprafication of America written all over it -- except that at least Oprah promotes real literary works and not oversized and overpriced scrapbooks.

The surprise arrival of former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., shook the audience out of its malaise long enough to give him a standing ovation. Then there was more bad news, cushioned by the announcement that Edwards was five minutes away: He would be making "brief" remarks, answering questions for about 15 minutes and then signing books. This produced a chorus of groans.

"I know one man has been waiting here since 4 p.m.," the emcee told the crowd apologetically.

It was already after 7:30 p.m.

Edwards finally entered the room to a standing ovation. At the podium he acknowledged Cleland, who saluted from the front row. Edwards told the crowd the money raised from Home would be going to Habitat for Humanity and the International Rescue Committee. That dispelled some of the sting produced by the book's lack of substance, but the worry was that Edwards would offer the same platitudes in the question-and-answer session as he revealed in a flat opening set of remarks.

As promised, the question-and-answer session was brief.

But Edwards' answers weren't the cue cards one might have expected given the initial tone of the event.

They reflected grimness, gravity, complexity.

He doesn't speak rousing poetry to the people, as King or the Kennedys did. But truth contains something of the suffering voice of the people in a time of slogans and body bags.

"I do believe the most serious issue has to be the re-establishment of America's leadership role in the world," Edwards said. "It's not too much to say the future of the world is at stake. It is."

-- Max Pizarro