One of the criticisms of you will be that you're an evil trial lawyer. President Bush has made tort reform an issue, as has Sen. Lieberman. In fact, in July 1999 Lieberman said the following: "As some of you know," Lieberman said, "I have supported just about every tort reform proposal that's come along the track in my 11 years here because I think this great system that we inherited from our English predecessors, which was aimed at holding liable those who are negligent and create damage, and making whole those who are injured, has gone way off track and become a lottery in which literally a few people do very well but most of the people injured don't really get adequately compensated." Thoughts?

I believe people who sit on juries are the same people who decide elections in America. Juries are a microcosm of America. People who don't like juries deciding a case don't like regular Americans. In this country, the power has always been with regular Americans deciding elections. I have enormous respect for regular Americans. They decide elections and I certainly think they should be allowed to settle disputes between Americans.

Now, I have always believed that we need to be really rigorous in making sure the cases being filed have merit. We don't need to clog up the system. But I do not favor taking away the rights of the Valerie Lakeys of the world. [Lakey is perhaps Edwards' most celebrated client -- a 5-year-old severely injured by a wading pool drain. Edwards won a $30 million settlement for her and her family.] And that's exactly what this kind of system would do. If you put a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages, it hits women and children and the most seriously injured; it hits them like a laser beam. And in my judgment it's not the right thing to do.

Why do you think you're better suited to be president than President Bush?

Because I think in many ways he's the opposite of me. I come from a family where my dad worked in a mill, where my mom's last job was working at the Post Office, I was the first in my family to go to college. And I spent most of my legal career representing the same kind of people as those in my family.

The president comes from a different background. So our perspectives on the world are very different. His administration is largely run by insiders. They're the people he's grown up with and has known most of his life. But this means that when the interests of inside people and inside interest groups conflict with the interests of average Americans, way too often he sides with the insiders. That's not a surprise; it's his background, they're the people he's grown up with. But I'm very different than this president.

Bush's thoughts right now are no doubt preoccupied with North Korea. What would you do about this situation if you were president? What would you do differently?

A number of things. First, I would do everything in my power to rehabilitate our relationship with South Korea. The extraordinary anti-American sentiment there is really disturbing. And that relationship has gone downhill under Bush's watch. That relationship is critical to us managing the North Korea situation.

The second thing I'd do is, I'd do everything in my power to build an international coalition and put pressure on North Korea. The president and Secretary [of State Colin] Powell are doing some of that.

Third, as a representative of the U.S. government, I'd sit with North Korea and negotiate.

I understand your first point, but how is the rest of that any different from what the Bush administration is doing now?

Well, yes, President Bush has indicated recently that he would do the third point. But what I just said I've been saying since before the administration started doing it. Now, in the last couple days they said they will negotiate. So that's good.

But there's a larger point here; I do have a significantly different worldview than the president.

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