"You do it yourself, that's what really hurts..." - Radiohead, Just
As I write this, we're just a couple of hours into the official mainstream media phase of the John Edwards scandal and I'm already surprised. Something has happened that I didn't anticipate.
I've lost respect for Elizabeth Edwards.
As I've said previously, I admired both of the Edwards prior to this. Like most people I especially liked and admired Elizabeth Edwards. Even when I believed that Edwards was hiding something, I assumed Elizabeth was a victim. Now, that's changed.
The John Edwards interview -- which he states will be his very last comment on the subject -- hasn't aired yet but we do have a statement from Elizabeth Edwards. Ironically (to me, anyway) she posted it on the popular liberal blog The Daily Kos. The one upshot from her statement is that she knew about Edward's affair prior to his run for office.
I'm not assuming bad motives. I believe that the Edwards are both sincere in their stated positions about poverty, health care and other issues. I can even believe that the reason they wanted Edwards to become president was to promote that agenda. To the extent that's true, I totally agree with their ends but their means were so shortsighted, reckless, and potentially damaging to their own agenda that they can't be ignored.
Just taking the Edwards current statements at their words, I am left with a very uncomfortable truth -- both John and Elizabeth Edwards cynically used their marriage as a means to help John Edwards win an election. Right now, they are hoping that the emotional goodwill that they built up from their supporters will carry them through.
I'm sure I'll get some angry comments here but if you're an Edwards supporter, let me put this bluntly; if you gave John and Elizabeth Edwards time, money, support, or goodwill, they played you.
They made a conscious decision to make their relationship a focus throughout the campaign. That emotional goodwill you feel for them? They not only let you feel, they took actions and made statements specifically so you would feel it.
Then when the rumors first surfaced, they made the worst decision of all; they decided to lie about it and to keep lying about it for months. They lied in a way that made the people who were telling the truth look like the real liars. They lied in a way that turned their supporters into attack dogs. They only started to tell the truth when John Edwards was caught at the Beverly Hills Hilton and even now both John and Elizabeth Edward are calling the people who caught him the liars. That's the definition of shameless.
It didn't have to be that way.
I am fully convinced that if there was just a short affair with Rielle Hunter in 2006, John Edwards could have run for President eventually. Just not in 2008. Elizabeth Edwards shouldn't have supported his bid for the White House and she especially shouldn't have helped him promote the story about what a great husband he was. Elizabeth Edwards as a wife, friend, and adviser should have told her husband emphatically and in no uncertain terms to wait and to get the story of the affair out in the open as soon as possible.
Imagine if the affair story had been revealed back in early 2007. Some people, myself included, wouldn't have cared much in the first place. Others would have forgiven Edwards an affair in four or eight years, especially if Edwards filled that time with good works and devotion to his family.
Because I believe in the Edwards agenda, I still want to believe in the Edwards as people. Right now, though, I don't see either of them as victims of anything but their own ambition.
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he Edwards knew perfectly well that they were being paid to keep their mouths shut.. while they pretended to be the perfect family..
sure, blame the terminally ill woman here.
god forbid men hold themselves accountabl
When you sleep around with someone you know has a commitment elsewhere, you are no one to play the innocent card.
Together, she and John have supported each other through trials that drive many couples apart. After more than three decades of marriage, parenting, careers and public life, they remain devoted to each other, notwithsta
Did she underestim
No, of all the things he may be lying about, this may be one. And why she is letting him say she knew, I cannot fathom....
Both of the Edwards lied to the American people and they both put their objectives ahead of not just honor and integrity - they put all Democrats in the position of losing right before this crucial Presidenti
It doesn't matter if you think having an affair should disqualify someone for office. Too many voters think it should. That's just the truth of the current state of politics.
And if John Edwards had won the Democratic nomination and run against McCain, and then in October of 2008, the truth about this affair came out, we would once again be stuck with a pathetic Republican leader and a repeat of the self-servi
Any progress that we could have made as a country - improved education, environmen
Maybe you or I would have done things differentl
Your article makes it look like she conspired an affair and a coverup, which is ridiculous
The lifetime work he has done to help the poor and working class in this nation...F
He has asked God to forgive him and he asked his wife to forgive him.....th
Besides, George W. Bush has done FAR WORSE to this nation with over 4,200 of our soldiers dead in a war that didn't need to happen!!
WAKE UP!!!!
I mean if he was so interested in helping the poor and working class he wouldn't have parked this roadshow in the the middle of the presidenti
He really only has a a couple of priorities now, make it up to his family and stand- up for his new child.
The Dem party can only be crippled by this fiasco to the extent it becomes not only was he unfaithful ( yawn) but carried on while his wife was ill and he was campaignig , but has apparently paid money to make "arrangeme
John Edward's actions constitute embezzleme
He must be compelled to offer a full accounting of campaign funds spent to finance his affair. Rielle Hunter's expenses: plane fares to Africa and elsewhere, the hotel and meal charges, cocktails, etc. were, I am sure, picked up by the campaign.
The total amount embezzled might approach a million dollars.
John Edwards spoke of "Two Americas" and now we are learning that there are two John Edwards. The hypocrisy of the real John Edwards is staggering
No one can begin to understand what went on - but people are fragile. Yet they can still make sound judgments on policy and law.
I maintain utmost respect for these human beings. I wish them well.
4 million for the least expensive house in the developmen
I stopped seeing the woman in 2006 when my wife's cancer was in remission ( oops National Enquirer photos taked in 2008 )
I will help the people of New Orleans ( whoops more photos different month 2008 ) because I am the here for you.
As one of Edwards' supporters in the primary, I thought that Obama could not choose a better Attorney General. Now I am having to face my delusions. I know now that if he would have been our nominee, we would be looking forward to 4 more years of Republican incompeten
Elizabeth can go on supporting him and colluding in their lies, and I will feel pity for their genuinely personal problems. But she knew, perhaps better than he, what THEIR lies would cost the country had he been nominated, and I have no sympathy for the "private position" they took (that is 'spin' for 'colluding in a selfish and arrogant conspiracy against the American people and their supporters for personal gain'.) I have absolutely no sympathy for either of them for that.