This morning, as Senator Edwards heads to his major policy speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, he took time for a conference call with the media. I had received a media alert about the conference call and asked if I, as a blogger, could participate. Sen. Edwards press secretary responded “We are blogger friendly”

As you come to expect with political candidates, the call started a little late. Sen. Edwards started off outlining the speech that he should be giving as I write up this blog post.

He said the speech is focused on the fundamental transformational changes needed here in the States and in the across the world such as dealing with poverty, health care, global warming, a new energy economy, and improvements to education. He went on to say that he would be talking a lot about global issues which would be the newest part to people in the press corps.

He spoke about how the way we deal with global poverty is related to our national security and wanted to focus on a few specific items. First and foremost, he spoke about America leading a worldwide effort to provide primary education. This represents over 100 million children. He spoke about the importance of preventative health care, and talked about starting from the simplest and most important aspects of providing access to clean water. He spoke about the importance of providing economic and political opportunity, through programs like micro finance, and about the importance of democracy building.

He envisions a new cabinet position to oversee these efforts. He tied it all together by referencing a speech had given some years ago, entitled Defense of Optimism. In spite of a dysfunctional health care system, our nation’s addiction to oil and the war in Iraq, there is still reason to be optimistic.

At this point, we went to questions from the media. Kate Snow from ABC News started off with asking what the post would be called. Sen. Edwards hasn’t nailed down a name for the post yet. Kate followed up with a question about whether or not Sen. Edwards would replace all the U.S. Attorneys at the beginning of his term, the way President Clinton did. Sen. Edwards spoke about the need to evaluate each U.S. Attorney.

Adam Hochberg from NPR noted that Sen. Edwards is asking Americans to be patriotic about more than just war, and asked the Senator to expound on that. Sen. Edwards said that a good starting point is asking Americans to drive cars that are more fuel efficient, to drive less and to meet other energy efficiency standards.

Adam followed up by asking if there would be governmental incentives. Sen. Edwards responded that in some cases there would be incentives, other cases would include mandates and in some cases people would be asked to voluntarily find ways of being more energy efficient.

One question that I particularly liked was Marie Horrigan’s question. She works for Congressional Quarterly. She suggested that the results of the 2006 elections reflected a desire of Americans to pull back from the global stage and focus on local interests. Based on this, she asked, how well did the Senator think a global war on poverty would play?

Sen. Edwards said that he didn’t know what the politics of this would be like. He said we cannot use what has happened in Iraq to disengage from our global responsibilities. I think Sen. Edwards was especially on point about this. We need leaders that will inspire us to do what is best for our country and our world, even when some are losing their appetitive for being moral leaders.

Mike Baker, of the Associated Press, asked about what happened at the campaign headquarters last night. Sen. Edwards spoke about a staff member receiving a letter with ‘negative comments’ and white powder. FBI agents and local law enforcement officials were notified. They asked the campaign to evacuate the office while the powder was analyzed. It turned out to be harmless.

Sen. Edwards noted that like any high level Presidential campaign, they will receive threats and the threats will be dealt with appropriately. Sen. Edwards then spoke about sitting down with his staff, reassuring them, and telling them that he was proud of the work they were doing. I really appreciated hearing this personal side of the campaign. People too often forget that candidates and their staff are real people too.

Josh Goldstein of the New York Sun asked about strategic aspects of Sen. Edwards plan and whether or not education really deals with the issue of terrorism. Sen. Edwards spoke about his experiences talking with foreign leaders which leads him to believe that it does. Goldstein also asked about Sen. Edwards plan to raise the minimum wage and how high it should be raised. Sen. Edwards suggested that $7.50/hour is a good start, it doesn’t help people get to a livable wage, but it is better than what we have today.

Lyn Sweet from the Sun Times followed up on the Attorney General Gonzales and what his role should be going forward. Sen. Edwards simply stated that Gonzales should resign, and if he doesn’t Bush should fire him. As an aside, it is good to see even Republican’s coming around to this opinion.

Lyn also asked if people should be asked to drive less, and Sen. Edwards responded in the affirmative.

Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press asked how difficult will it be for the campaign to be carbon neutral. There are always the problems with last minute schedule changes, lots of travel and so on. Sen. Edwards admitted that it won’t be easy and it won’t be cheap. Personally, I think Sen. Edwards decision to try and run a carbon neutral campaign is brilliant and I hope other campaigns follow suit. Pickler also asked about what cars Sen. Edwards was riding in and the Senator talked about their efforts to use smaller cars wherever possible.

With that, we ran out of time and questions. I should note, that this is all from notes that I quickly typed up during the conference call. I may have missed a few things, I may not have gotten everything exactly verbatim, or may have missed a nuance here or there, but I do believe that it provides a good summary of what Sen. Edwards said to reporters.

I do hope that Sen. Edwards’ staff continues to make calls like this open to bloggers and that other campaigns follow suit.

(Cross posted at DailyKos)