So last year when John Edwards decided to run for president -- this, in light of his wife Elizabeth just having been diagnosed with incurable bone cancer -- I thought, wow, that's kind of selfish of him. My thinking went: running for president is hard, requires long hours and lots of contention and inasmuch as is possible always appearing chipper and shiny, and is that what you want to put your terminally ill spouse through? A spouse who has only recently beaten some pretty bad breast cancer? But then I thought, they're a political couple, and if this is how they choose to see out her final years as a wife and a mother of small children, that's their business. And, maybe it's good medicine for her.
Hearing Edwards speak last year did nothing to endear me to him. He wanted a nanny-state that to me bordered on socialism. I recall getting into a pretty heated argument about how much I loathed his ideas about government-run health care, the people I was arguing with saying, but the drug and health care companies are the problem; that the people who run them are greedy and cannot be trusted! And my countering that people, too, would be running any government health care system, people just as prone to failure and greed and telling you they are doing one thing when in fact they are doing another.
And so the snake eats its tail: John Edwards today admits, after many months denying, that he was having a sexual affair, one he did not tell his wife about and one he was engaged in while making the decision to run for president. Gee, John, way treat the little woman.
As Hillary and I just discussed: I'd be happy to have a bachelor president who rutted all he liked. Or, a married president who's spouse did not care if he/she screwed around; what do I care who John Edwards has sex with? Or anyone, for that matter? But if you lie, and jeopardize not only your personal relationships but the affairs of country you claim to so deeply care about and to defend, you know what? Go away.
For those still interested: you can watch Edwards squirm tonight on Nightline, though I cannot imagine it being anything but a sanitized, scripted affair, wherein he'll put on the hair shirt without, somehow, ever admitting he was at fault. Dirt bag.
My BS radar has been off the charts on him for years. He was one of the most conservative Senate Dems during his tenure, and then, all of a sudden, he became the populist hero. He not only voted for, but co-sponsored, the Patriot Act. And he was up there with Lieberman when it came to tut-tutting Bill Clinton's affair.
But what tore it for me was his presidential announcement in the ruins of the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. My out-of-town friends thought it showed guts and determination and his commitment to rebuilding. My reaction - as one who lived a mile from the spot - was that it was as if Giuliani had made his announcement in the pit where the Trade Center once stood.
Well, dude, it's been 2 years, and Brad Pitt has done far more for that neighborhood than you have.
Cancer. The woman has CANCER. And you pipe up and tell ABC News that it was in REMISSION when you started cheating on her, like that makes it BETTER?
Posted by: Kevin | August 08, 2008 at 02:45 PM
He actually tried to climb back onto high ground by saying he didn't start the affair until his wife went into remission.
I don't care who he sleeps with, either. But it wasn't just an affair and a lie. He fathered a child, refused to admit it, and has been paying his mistress to stay quiet ever since. Think about how committed a person has to be to the lie in order for that much money to be involved. I think when a man and his campaign employees start paying people to lie for him, then he can no longer claim his sex life is private.
Posted by: Sue | August 08, 2008 at 02:54 PM
oh hi, Kevin. I guess you and I would agree about that. Hey, this is just like being at Yur's!
Posted by: Sue | August 08, 2008 at 02:58 PM
If Sue is right, and I don't have any reason to believe she's not, how much more Clintonesque can we get than Andrew Young, Edwards' former campaign manager, insisting he's the father of the child?
Posted by: Nancy Rommelmann | August 08, 2008 at 03:10 PM
Here's the best part from the article I read
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5441195&page=1
:
"Since becoming pregnant, Hunter has lived under assumed names in a series of expensive homes in North Carolina and, more recently, in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Edwards denied paying any money to Hunter to keep her from going public but said it was possible some of his friends or supporters may have made payments without telling him."
Posted by: Sue | August 08, 2008 at 07:32 PM
I hate to admit that I used to like him, about five years ago. I liked him slightly less when he was John Kerry's running mate, and he's been a complete douchebag ever since. Good riddance.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten | August 09, 2008 at 02:39 AM
I heard a television reporter say that on their trip to Africa, Rielle couldn't believe how "adventurous" Edwards was. Heh.
Posted by: MikeRoche | August 09, 2008 at 10:18 AM