For an election that hasn't even hit the primaries, the 2008 run for the White House has been quite a show.

The undisputed stars of that show, getting more press and sparking more speculation than all other candidates combined, are Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. You can hardly turn on the television without seeing one, if not both, of them on softball interview shows like "Larry King Live" or blowhard-punditry shows from the likes of Wolf Blitzer and Sean Hannity. But while everyone has been focusing on Obama and Clinton, a third candidate has been floating around, running a campaign that easily kicks the others to the curb.

John Edwards.

Compared with near-constant news coverage when Clinton and Obama both announced their intentions to run for president, the Edwards camp received little fanfare. The second he threw his hat into the ring, it seemed he was already destined to fail.

Republicans didn't view him as a threat; he lacked Obama's heat and Clinton's experience. The public barely registered his name; wasn't he the guy who ran with the guy who looked like Herman Munster and was married to the ketchup lady? And the Democrats had no faith in him; after all, he hitched himself to John Kerry's campaign, and the last thing the Democratic Party wanted to do was remind voters of that spineless train wreck of a campaign.

It seemed only a matter of time before he ran out of money and bowed out as quietly as he entered.

Then Edwards' wife's cancer returned.

Suddenly, cameras from coast to coast were glued on him, wanting to know the fate of a campaign that only a week ago, few seemed willing to acknowledge. And this is where the real John Edwards, beyond the bluster and name-calling that plagued his image in 2004, finally appeared to the country.

Far from the empty suit Al Gore and Kerry presented to the country, here was someone who seemed warm, personable and empathetic. And, best of all, someone willing to fight.

Two days after his statement that his campaign would go on despite his wife's incurable cancer, Edwards came out in support of universal health care and did what neither Obama nor Clinton have been willing to do — he gave an estimate as to how much it would cost ($90 billion to $120 billion). And with a price tag like that, it'll mean a tax increase.

Considering the country finds itself sinking deep into a deficit thanks to the Iraq war, even mentioning a social program that would entail a tax hike would seem like political suicide. But that's the beauty of Edwards' post-2004 campaign.

He has learned something from Kerry that neither Obama nor Clinton has: American voters do not want a candidate who is a slave to advisers or opinion polls. They want a candidate willing to say something unpopular simply because the candidate believes strongly in it.

Edwards isn't wasting his time trying to appear "moderate" or trying to get Republican votes in some kind of misguided partisan quest. He has fashioned himself as a liberal populist out to stand up for the underdog. He's not the first to say that in the last eight years, but he is the first to back it up with proposed policies and concrete numbers.

As much as I like both Obama and Clinton, their campaigns have been too soft, not going far enough when they should and vacillating any time they're called to take a stance. After Edwards discussed his health care plan, for instance, both Obama and Clinton gave vague, milquetoast sound bites about raising taxes and wouldn't discuss their own plans for health care.

The 2008 election is not going to be an election in which Democrats can sit there and weigh potential point loss/gain for everything they say and every move they make. If they hold an opinion, if they have a proposal, they have to make themselves heard, and they need to stand behind what they say.

And 2008 isn't going to be an election decided by moderates; it will be decided by the vast, untapped legion of voters who didn't vote at all last time because they claimed there was little difference between Kerry and Bush. In order to win this election, a candidate is going to have to stand by their convictions and give definite, well thought-out answers to questions of policy.

So far, the only candidate willing to do that has been the one who was written off by the public, the press and his own party. Tragedy may have been the thing to finally propel Edwards into the spotlight, but it will be competence and candor that keep him there.

Pete Nichols is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at nicho261@msu.edu.