By David Nather, CQ Staff

Alone among the eight front-running presidential candidates, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina was willing to answer a set of specific questions about his views of executive power. Not surprisingly, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee defines most of his views through his rejection of President Bush’s policies, promising to end some of the Bush’s most inflammatory practices.

His answers are consistent with the fiery rhetoric he uses on the campaign trail. “I’m going to make absolutely certain that our three branches of government are in fact co-equal,” Edwards said last week. “We don’t have a royal presidency. We don’t have a king of the United States of America.” And fortunately for Edwards, there is little in his record to undermine the picture he paints of an Edwards presidency.

That’s mainly because the record is so short, with little solid evidence of his executive power views other than what he says about them. Edwards has just six years in the Senate — much of the last two spent on the campaign trail, running for president in 2003 and early 2004 and then for vice president after that — and no executive experience. So all that can be said is that he has a history of speeches that are consistent with his current rhetoric.

HOME STRETCH: Edwards, trailing Clinton and Obama in Iowa, takes the stage in Grinnel on Nov. 20. (GETTY IMAGES / DAVID LIENEMANN)

In his written answers, Edwards took issue with the administration’s version of the “unitary executive” theory that a president can interpret the Constitution independently and direct the executive branch without interference from Congress. “I strongly disagree with the view of President Bush that the president can ignore validly enacted laws of Congress just because he disagrees with them,” he said.

In addition, Edwards maintained that a president lacks the power to authorize conduct outside the laws and then use the rationale that such actions are necessary to defend the country. During his confirmation hearings this fall, Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to rule out such a view of presidential power — which came into play with the warrantless wiretapping program — when he was asked a similar question by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy , a Vermont Democrat.

And when asked if a president may issue signing statements that reserve the right not to enforce certain provisions of the legislation, Edwards replied that he does “not support President Bush’s policy of using signed statements to disregard the established separation of powers between the president and Congress.”

Edwards portrays himself as a strong supporter of congressional oversight, even to the point of endorsing the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which limited a president’s ability to wage war without a congressional declaration. Every president since it was enacted, regardless of party, has been careful not to recognize the resolution. Edwards declared that “I strongly support” it, adding that Congress “has a responsibility to conduct thorough and timely oversight of the executive branch.”

Those words could come back to haunt Edwards if he wins, but they’re not surprising, given the aggressive view he has taken of Congress’ responsibility to end the Iraq War. Throughout his campaign, Edwards — who says his 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq War was a mistake — has urged Congress to send Bush only war funding bills with troop withdrawal deadlines, regardless of how many times he vetoes them. The message, he says, should be “no timeline, no funding.”

Even Edwards, however, took care to reserve some presidential powers in case he ends up in the White House. He said he supports “the constitutional separation of powers and the doctrine of executive privilege, as guided by judicial review.” He declined to get more specific about what kinds of situations would lead him to withhold information from Congress, saying only that unlike Bush, “I will not invoke executive privilege merely to advance partisan ends.”

And while the president “should consult with Congress” before pulling out of a treaty, Edwards said, he added that “the courts have recognized that the president has the authority unilaterally to withdraw from a treaty.”

Some analysts say Edwards’ populist campaign rhetoric offers hints of an expansive view of presidential power — just not the way Bush has defined it.

In his recent speeches, he has promised to launch a crusade against special-interest lobbyists that would provide its own rationale for him to claim strong executive powers. For example, he has promised to seek a “constitutional version of the line-item veto” to help him crack down on earmarks, which he calls “the bread and butter of wealthy lobbyists.” The Supreme Court declared an earlier version of the line-item veto unconstitutional in 1998.

He has even threatened to take the government-subsidized medical insurance coverage away from Congress and senior officials in his administration if they don’t pass a universal health care plan by July 2009. If that sounds a bit beyond the powers of a president, he has included a crucial qualifier: He says he will use “every power I have available to me” to take the coverage away.

“If you listen to what he’s saying, it’s about how to use the presidency as a power center to oppose other power centers,” said Ferrel Guillory, a program director at the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It’s been reduced to being described as populist rhetoric, but it’s also about how you think about what the presidency is about.”

Edwards promises to bring transparency to his presidency, noting in an August debate that “this government doesn’t belong to the president of the United States. It belongs to you, and you should know what’s happening in your government.”

Such transparency has not always been the experience of reporters who have covered Edwards, though. In June, The New York Times ran a critical feature about a tax-exempt organization that Edwards created to fight poverty but also used to fund political activities — noting that it did not have to disclose its donors. And in January, when the News & Observer in Raleigh examined the controversy over a $6 million mansion in which the Edwards family lives in nearby Chapel Hill, the family refused to allow a reporter and photographer to visit the estate. The paper hired a plane to take aerial photographs.

“He has not been this shining light of openness,” said Rob Christensen, the News & Observer reporter who wrote that story and who has covered Edwards for much of his political career. “But he hasn’t been terrible, either.”