By Laura Rodell

Taking his presidential campaign directly to college students, former Sen. John Edwards is trying to buoy young people to get more involved in the political process

Two-and-a-half months after announcing his presidential candidacy, Edwards held a conference call with student newspaper reporters to spark young people’s interest and involvement in political issues.

Edwards began Tuesday’s call by highlighting some of the major themes of his 10-stop college tour aimed at engaging young people in the political process and empowering them to help effect national and global “transformative change.” He spoke of his plan for universal healthcare, whereby, according to his Web site JohnEdwards.com, tax cuts for people making more than $200,000 a year would be rolled back to finance health insurance coverage for both working and non-working individuals.

“I’m, at this point, the only candidate to come out with a substantive, detailed, very specific and truly universal healthcare plan so that everyone would be covered,” he said.

Edwards called global warming and climate change “an emergency.”

“I have today announced that my presidential campaign will be carbon-neutral, which means we will operate it in an energy-efficient fashion, and when [we’re] traveling, we’ll offset carbon emissions by purchasing carbon credits from businesses and others to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the country,” he said, adding it “is not easy, but is important.”

Edwards – who in a November 2005 Washington Post op-ed called his vote to authorize war in Iraq “a mistake” – advocated troop withdrawal and urged students to inject their voices into the debate.

“America needs to be leaving Iraq, and students’ voices can make a huge difference in that effort as they have in the past. For example, the war in Vietnam.”

Another exigent international issue Edwards raised was the ongoing genocide in Western Sudan and Darfur. Again, he prompted students to continue heightening its visibility, and he called on America to act “as a force for good again.”

Edwards lastly noted that, hours earlier, he had called for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in response to last year’s firing of several federal prosecutors, which some speculate was politically motivated.

During the ensuing question-and-answer session, Edwards fielded inquiries on widely ranging topics. Asked whether he would support impeaching President Bush, Edwards said he believes Bush at times acted unconstitutionally, such as in “spying on Americans illegally,” but feels Congress has far more substantive issues to address.

“When we have 47 million people without healthcare, men and women dying in Iraq, 37 million Americans living in poverty, literally worrying about surviving every day, I would not expend energy on impeachment proceedings,” he said.

Edwards was also asked about his College for Everyone program, in which qualified students work a minimum of 10 hours per week in exchange for one year of free tuition and books at a community college or public university. Edwards set up the program in a poor section of North Carolina with the goal of enabling more people to attend college and graduate with less debt. He hopes to extend it to four-year institutions and make it nationwide.

“I proposed this during the 2004 presidential election, but I wanted to see if it would work so I went out and raised the money for it. There’s no government money in what we’re doing. We got the community involved and it’s been very successful,” he said, adding that its economic feasibility on a larger scale was a budgetary question.

On the subject of how universal healthcare could ease the transition from being undergraduates covered under parents insurance, to being members of the workforce who need their own coverage, Edwards said, his plan would subsidize coverage for individuals with low or no income. That is, it would kick in during the interim between graduating college and finding a job.

“Particularly when you’re younger, you move more from job to job because you’re trying to sort of find the place where you feel like you can do the best and be of the most service,” he said, adding that periods of layoffs exacerbate this process.

Underscoring the comprehensiveness of his healthcare plan, Edwards noted that long-term, mental, dental and preventative care would all be covered.

“You don’t have to be terribly sick to get healthcare coverage,” he said. “You can just have a wellness visit, in other words, make sure you’re okay physically [and] make sure nothing’s wrong as part of an overall healthy lifestyle.”

Asked about the need to politically engage college students, Edwards, who has been particularly vocal on this issue, praised students’ “willingness to think outside the box” and “stand up for what’s right instead of just being politically careful.”

“I think we have a great opportunity to do good to this country and to change America [and] to change the world in a really serious way and students can make a huge difference in that process.”

John Edwards, former senator from North Carolina and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.