Let's look at the phrase you scissored out to provide purchase (slippery though it might be) for your screed:
 

but they always listen to offers to settle

The context being that "trial lawyers prepare all their cases as though they will have to try them, but they always listen to offers to settle, at least until it becomes clear that the other party is either not seriously interested in settling or is just trying to stroke the attorney."  I'd have quoted my earlier by cut-and-paste, but the structure of the site will not allow such.

The part which I left out, which is both obvious and well-known to anyone who's actually been in a courtroom, is that the lawyer trying the case has to be able to get past the fear of losing the case or, in the words of some past lawyer, "you've got to be willing to wait and listen for the knock on the jury room door".  In short, one cannot be afraid to go to the mat.  But, one must also recognize that 95 or more percent of cases settle - but you cannot know when you begin the case which ones are the 5 percent which will have to be tried, so you have to treat every one as such.

In other words, you'll fight, but only when it's to your advantage.

Let's look at these principles, translating them (in the engineering/physics sense, i.e., moving them sideways) into the context of international relations - as much a field of continuous conflict and conflict resolution as any courthouse.  It is often, and accurately said, that a lawsuit is just a little, private war between two (or three, or more) parties.  Every nation has its interests and means of defending them, usually an army.  Every nation which has an army, trains that army to fight wars.  But, by and large, the vast majority of the time the armies do not fight.  That does not mean there are not conflicts - they go on daily.  Always have and always will.  Going to war every time there is a conflict between countries or otherwise does not happen because (a) it's too expensive (in time, money, lives, political capital, etc.) and (b) the outcome is never certain.  You pick your battles, and pick only those you can win.  Resolving conflict (diplomatically) has the same advantages of settling a lawsuit - certainty and knowing one will walk away with something even if they are not entirely satisfied with the result.

It's pretty clear now (if it wasn't already) that you've never sat in a courtroom waiting the verdict of a case you tried - the uncertain outcome.  I can tell you, from experience, that that's one of the loneliest, quietest waits one can have, and also one of those events which most reveals the character of everyone involved.

Compare all this to Bush and how he has behaved since day one.  

Bush, true to his professional training and experience, spent his time in the presidency doing what he did before he became a figurehead owner of a baseball team.  He used the resources of the company at his disposal (then, Arbusto, now, the US Government) to (A) find new lands for oil companies to drill (then, in Texas, now Iraq - remember, invading Iraq was way high on the priority list well before 9/11), and then (B) arrange for those oil companies to get access to those lands (then, make deals with landowners.  Now, invade and take the country and install a puppet government.).  In so doing, he was (C) a spectacular failure (then, in terms of trashing his company, finances and reputation, now, doing the same to the US) and (D) only marginally successful in gaining the drilling rights he was trying to arrange for the oil companies (he had to be bailed out by Daddy's friends then, and now).  And, in so doing, he exercised all the b*tch-slapping discipline one could imagine not for duty's sake, but his personal pleasure (then, as Daddy's enforcer of campaign and party discipline through public humiliation.  Now, through torture and personnel policies intended to rip all decency out of the USG).

I'd call the oil companies his "partners" (then and now), but they aren't partners in any sense of the word - the oil companies are truly in the dominant position, as much as Cheney is in the dominant position running the administration.  There are any number of hustlers in the oil patch trying to gain drilling rights and then flip them to the oil companies.  These hustlers, like hustlers everywhere, (A) are always on the edge of crashing their businesses (and often do) when their schemes do not come together and (B) do not care (1) what corners they cut, (2) what dirt they do to their competitors, or (3) what laws they violate or graft they participate in - just so they make the deal go through.  The companies know all this, and recognize that these hustlers are both desperate and disposable.  They treat them accordingly - like dirt.  Watch what happens to Bushie when he leaves office - he'll have a sinecure, but no one will ever take him seriously again.

You say:

What we desperately do not need now is some lawyer who thinks every thing can be worked out in "negotiation." The word is not in their dictionary and they judge all who use it as weak.

When one says Edwards made his fortune (relatively small though it is in comparison to Romney's quarter Billion) by trying cases, that tells me he is all character, and both smart enough to know which fights to pick, and how to win.  Juries don't give up money easily and they know that "what you are screams so loudly I can hardly hear what you are saying".