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I was pleasantly surprised by John Edwards’ campaigning snippet on the NewsHour last night. Except for an annoying tendency to congratulate the questioning audience members, he did a good job. Perhaps a number of the candidates are revealing that in fact they are good campaigners and professional speakers and that the problems of the Democratic field are deeper than personal flaws.

That said, Edwards did perfectly illustrate what I wrote yesterday about the Democrats pretense that new government initiatives won’t cost us anything really. Note how he transitions from claims that he will restore fiscal responsibility to a laundry list of expensive new initiatives that are supposed to occur while preserving a middle-class (income under $200,000 a year, mind you) tax cut.

WOMAN: When you’re president, what will you do to reduce our horrific debt?

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: Our debt, our deficit?

WOMAN: Yes.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: First, I’d get us seriously back on the road to fiscal responsibility. And the way I would do that, is I would stop Bush’s tax cuts, people who make over $200,000 a year, number one.

Number two, I would– and I think I’m the only one proposing this– I would actually raise the capital gains rate for people in the top income bracket.

And then third, I would close some corporate tax loopholes and some specific corporate tax loopholes. A number of them need to be closed. ( Applause )

And just so you’d know what that would do, is it pays for my healthcare plan, what I want to do to make college available, how to strengthen middle class.

All the things that I want to do are paid for with that, plus it leaves hundreds of billions of dollars for deficit reduction. So it actually moves us back to the place that we need to be. And it’s a big issue. I’m glad that you pointed it out. Yes sir.

By the time he’s done, Edwards has spent the revenue stream three times over! OK, I don’t have the budget figures in front of me and probably wouldn’t know what to do with them if I did, but still - am I alone in doubting that all of Edwards’ initiatives would leave hundreds of billions of dollars for deficit reduction? Especially considering that the deficit is not only a static debt but is growing because of current budget breach between existing revenue and what we expect government to do (especially the kind of muscular military and domestic security budgets that Edwards undoubtedly supports).