Days later, I switched on CNN to see Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala, who hosted the political talk show Crossfire at the time, reporting from New Hampshire. They had bumped into Senator Edwards as he came out of a restaurant in Manchester, and he’d instantly agreed to walk with them to the network’s bus and conduct an impromptu interview. Snow flurries came down and the TV guys protected themselves with heavy coats, while the senator, who wore only a light jacket, bustled along as if he had all the energy and time in the world and couldn’t feel the blustery cold.

As they walked, Edwards said he had been hearing from voters who were worried about health care, especially the power of insurance companies and “the lack of any cost controls on prescription drugs, adding, “They’re very suspicious about it.” Carlson, a conservative, wondered aloud if Edwards might depict President Bush as “a big spender” when it came to health care and win some support from conservative voters. While Begala laughed at the notion, the senator picked up on it.

“Yes, I think that’s correct. You’re right about that.”

By this point in the broadcast, the three men had reached the CNN bus and Begala invited the senator aboard. He took a look at the vehicle, called the CNN Election Express, and blurted out, “Oh, cool bus!” It was an unguarded little remark, and it made him seem sincere, like the guy I used to know. Watching this series of unscripted moments, I shouted at the TV, “Dude, there you are! Welcome back, man!”

As they took their places in a little studio inside the bus, Begala and Carlson seemed thrilled. They told Edwards he was the first candidate ever to visit and then began asking about his previous experiences in life. This gave him a chance to attack George Bush’s policies at length and to talk about growing up in a small town and having experiences most Americans might find familiar. Then Carlson played right into his hands, offering up observations about how Howard Dean (like John Kerry) came from extreme wealth. The senator then went on to explain that Dean was never going to grab the nomination, and he made a reasonable argument for how he could actually win it.

“What will happen is what always happens in these multicandidate races. There are going to be huge changes between now and the New Hampshire primary, the Iowa caucuses, the South Carolina primary. Voters are going to start to focus on who their candidate should be. And they’re going to care about a lot of things. And one of the things is… who, in fact, can compete with [n c George Bush everywhere, who will be the best candidate for the Democratic Party.”

Not long after this encounter, the senator called to catch up. When I told him I was delighted by his encounter with Begala and Carlson, he said the moment had revived him. “I saw those guys and just thought, Fuck it. I’m going to do and say what I want.” The result had given him a sense that if he could continue to present himself with genuine emotion and reached enough voters, especially in Iowa, he might just win the nomination.

With the heightened commitment came a new message, devised with the help of consultant David Axelrod. Edwards began to talk about “two Americas,” one where everyday people played by the rules but were buffeted by powerful forces beyond their control, the other populated by a wealthy and influential minority who wielded too much power and influence, especially in Washington. Following Axelrod’s advice, the senator emphasized hope for the future and resisted personal attacks on his opponents. He also tried to adjust his image a bit to address the complaint that he looked too boyish.

For the next month, the senator pushed hard and made steady headway. When Al Gore endorsed Dean, Edwards brushed it off with a wisecrack about how the Republicans have “coronations” but Democrats have elections. In both New Hampshire and Iowa, he discovered die-​hard supporters, and polls showed he was rising in popularity as voters began to narrow their choices. The change was slow, however, and a week before the Iowa caucuses he was still in fourth place, almost twenty points behind Dean, according to one poll. That Sunday, he got some encouragement when he appeared on ABC and George Stephanopolous noted that a quarter of Iowa voters were still undecided, “and they like you.” Stephanopolous then played a video clip of a voter who said his one concern about Edwards was that he was a little too green.

“I’ve heard it all my life,” replied the senator. Then he talked in a way I had heard many times before, recalling how he was never expected to graduate from college or law school, and he wasn’t supposed to make it in his career as an attorney or as a candidate for United States Senate. At each step he had surprised people (and himself) by not just succeeding, but excelling. “My job is to convince them with my passion, my energy, that I can get this done.”

Unlike other candidates, Edwards promised Iowans he would never raise taxes on the middle class and that he would help everyone who qualified go to college, no matter their income. He raced around the state talking about hope, and as he had when he ran against Faircloth, he refused to be baited into attacking his rivals. “Cynics do not build this country, optimists build this country,” he repeated to crowds that were growing larger every day. By midweek, Howard Dean was sniping at him by name in his TV commercials, and he had earned the endorsement of the state’s most important paper, the Des Moines Register. The front-​page article was titled “John Edwards, Your Time Is Now.” This endorsement was so important that the senator called me at one-​thirty in the morning, s [theaying, “Andrew, this is huge.” Then he had me connect him by phone with his parents. The next day, John Kerry began attacking Edwards with snide remarks about his youthfulness, saying he was probably “in diapers” in 1969 when Kerry served in Vietnam.

In the brief exchanges we had on the phone during this push, Edwards sounded to me like a preacher at a revival meeting where everyone was catching the spirit and wanted to come to Jesus. Hoarse and exhausted, he was thrilled by the way people responded to his attacks on Bush and his optimistic message about a future with a Democrat in the White House. He understood that caucus participants were far more committed to the success of the party than people who voted in primaries and that they didn’t want to see their own guys shred one another. For this reason, he avoided making harsh attacks on his opponents. Grassroots Democrats seemed to appreciate his restraint. “We’re getting through, Andrew,” he crowed. “We really are.”

When the caucuses finally met, Edwards surged from fourth place with 11 percent to second place at about 32 percent. Unfortunately, John Kerry, who had also made a furious final week crusade, finished five points ahead and came out the clear winner. Howard Dean, who once seemed unbeatable, fell to below 20 percent and was then captured by TV cameras making a speech that included a strange-​sounding victory howl that was instantly dubbed the “Dean scream” and subjected to endless mockery by pundits, comedians, and Internet commentators.

Inside the Edwards campaign, we knew that with another week’s time we could have passed Kerry and won Iowa. Instead, the Massachusetts senator with the long résumé and extremely sober demeanor got most of the press attention as the campaign shifted to New Hampshire. Kerry, who like Dean lived in a neighboring state, had a huge advantage over us, and we had only a week to try to close the gap. To make matters worse, we were running out of money faster than we were running out of time. As the senator dashed around the state, he discovered the crowds were smaller than they had been in Iowa, but we couldn’t afford to buy enough advertising to reach them through the media. On election day Kerry scored his second win, Dean made a comeback to claim second, and Edwards finished a distant fourth, just behind General Wesley Clark.