Former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.), sketching out themes for a possible 2008 presidential campaign, said yesterday that the nation should set a goal of eliminating poverty over the next three decades and seek to reclaim the moral high ground internationally by starting to withdraw forces from Iraq.

On a day when the Senate defeated two Democratic amendments aimed at forcing President Bush to begin pulling out of Iraq, Edwards told a National Press Club audience the administration has made a mess in Iraq. He said he favors an immediate withdrawal of 40,000 troops and called for all combat forces to be gone in the next 12 to 18 months.

Democrat John Edwards, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, called poverty "the great moral issue of our time" on Thursday and proposed setting a goal to end it in the United States in the next 30 years.

"How we decide as a country to deal with poverty says everything about America," the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004 said in a speech at the National Press Club. "Poverty is an issue where we cannot fail."

Have we become too selfish and cynical? Or is the U.S. — despite being shaken by terror and distressed by the unending conflict in Iraq — ready to roll up its sleeves and renew its commitment to some of the goals and themes that once formed the basis of the American dream?

John Edwards is betting on the latter. In a major speech today at the National Press Club in Washington, Mr. Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who was John Kerry’s running mate in the 2004 presidential election, will ask: