John Edwards as Mr. Clean

As the two front-runners mud wrestle, the Great White Hope from North Carolina keeps blinking his eyes earnestly in the hope that Democrats will turn their lonely eyes toward him.

But John Edwards, like Mitt Romney in the other contest, is just too airbrushed for the part, try as he may, and his instinct for the jugular may remind voters of the class tattletale.

The New York Observer reports Edwards at a New York fundraiser, calling John McCain too "crazy" to have his finger on the nuclear button and hinting that Hillary Clinton will be tarring Barack Obama with more Rezko mud.

But if Edwards can pull off a decent showing in South Carolina Saturday, he may be able to hang around as a vulture waiting to pick at Clinton's and Obama's bones.

If so, voters may want to recall that, under all the operatic wailing for the poor, is a multimillionaire negligence lawyer who only last year fronted for a hedge fund that victimized them and, in one tepid term in the Senate, voted for the Iraq war in 2002.

That doesn't quite qualify him for the part of Mr. Clean.

Is John Edwards Accident-Prone?

On the heels of good news about the Iowa polling, the former Senator can’t resist shooting himself in the foot by trying to score points demanding his Democratic opponents give back contributions from Rupert Murdoch.

Today Murdoch’s New York Post notes that Edwards “himself earned at least $800,000 for a book published by one of the media mogul's companies.” Was he, the Post asked, going to give that back?

This little pickle recalls the hoo-ha about Edwards’ use of money raised to fight poverty for campaign purposes and his tortured explanation for earning almost half a million dollars for a part-time job with a hedge fund involved in sub-prime loans to low-income home owners.

Edwards might be well advised to stop talking about the rich and stick to palaver about the poor.