Remembering the "Forgotten Man"

By Suzanne Fields
TownHall.com

John Edwards has finished his celebrated poverty tour, making obligatory stops in hurricane-ravaged neighborhoods in New Orleans, decrepit Delta towns in Mississippi and Arkansas, up through Appalachian backwaters and finally home to Washington.

Now he ought to sit down for a good read with "The Forgotten Man," a new book by the economist Amity Shlaes. She shows how he's looking through the wrong end of his binoculars, emphasizing poverty and not the prosperity expanding the economy that lifts the poor. The public seems to understand what he doesn't. He has to bring up his poverty program because no one else will.