The Real Tragedy of John Edwards
I didn't want to believe it.
The incident in late July at the Beverly Hilton. The sneaking into the hotel through a side door. The hiding in the bathroom at 2:30 in the morning while a team of reporters from The National Enquirer lurked outside. The Other Woman ensconced in a hotel room upstairs with the baby girl. The cancer-stricken wife, campaign icon and rising political star waiting back home with the children. The repeated denials when the story broke that it was a lie, "tabloid trash."
I didn't want to believe it because, frankly, the whole scenario struck me as too tawdry and unreal, like one of those bad Lifetime movies for television. But I also didn't want to believe it because it would require a radical shift in my thinking, in my perception of John Edwards and who I thought he was.
Funny how the worst clichés often turn out to be true.
But it turns out that John Edwards, former senator, onetime vice presidential candidate, who rose from being the son of a mill worker to become a populist champion and Democratic candidate for president, is just a man. And a pretty flawed one at that. A politician who thought he could cheat on his wife, run for president and then get away with it by lying about it.
Don't they ever learn? The cover-up is what gets you every time.
As much as the pundits and cable talk shows would like to make it out to be, John Edwards' affair in 2006 with Rielle Hunter, an amateur videographer who was paid $110,000 by his campaign to produce four short videos for his website, is not a national tragedy. Or even a political tragedy. That Edwards will not be speaking at the Democratic convention, or that he won't have a shot at a cabinet post, is the least of his problems right now.
No, what the Edwards' scandal is is a bitter disappointment to the voters who believed in him, to the working-class men and women who coughed up $10 and $15 out of their paychecks for his campaign, and to the friends and campaign staff who worked for him and trusted him. He broke their hearts and they are hurt. Furious.
"Thousands of friends and supporters of Sen. Edwards put their faith and confidence in him and he has let them down," said David Bonior, a former congressman from Michigan who ran Edwards' 2008 presidential bid, when asked for a comment. "Young supporters who put their time and energy into his campaign with a newfound energy and idealism for politics have been betrayed by his actions."
Those young people might be disenchanted for a bit, put off by mainstream politics, but probably not much longer than it takes to tap out an instant message. They'll survive. And the Democratic Party--talk about a flawed organism--will too.
The real tragedy in this awful affair is personal and the damage John Edwards' has done to Elizabeth Edwards and their three children, and in particular his 25-year-old daughter Cate, who now, like that other famous political daughter, Chelsea Clinton, has to wrestle with the idea of her charismatic famous father as a terribly imperfect, dishonest man.
I hope it's a story about the Edwards' family that I never have to read.
Follow Mona Gable on Twitter: www.twitter.com/monalg
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He is just a man; one that made a stupid mistake. LIsten, if any of us are without sin then we can condemn the man.
Yola---We sin but we don't then ask the public for financial support.
There is no TRAGEDY just another sex scandal.
The real tragedy in this affair is what WE and the MEDIA are doing to Elizabeth Edwards and the children.
If anything, Senator Edwards seems more real and, yes, more honest, to me now.
Most of us would like to deny our indiscretions, whether those relate to eating a whole box of chocolate chip cookies while watching TV or to other things.
I'd rather have a real, functioning human being as my leader than have a truly immoral person like Senator McCain, who takes great pride in bragging about how he cheated on his first wife so he could get his hands on a younger, healthier woman who just happened to have $100 million.
And I'd prefer a media that concentrated on lies that matter, such as those told, daily, by Mr. Bush. His lies are the ones that have a material impact on us, and his pretense that he and his murderess wife are infallible (and the media's willingness to buy into that false picture) is pathetic.
We are all stronger realizing that, like the Edwards family, we can adjust and be better. For many reasons, the hypocrisy of the Bush "morality" is not the sort to which we should aspire.
More honest??? He has spent nearly an entire denying that he had any relationship with Hunter. Those denials are LIES.
What is it about southern boys? Somthing about their mammas? Extra horniness because of the heat? A religion that allows for redemption from sin? A streak of the rebel in all of 'em?
How could he possibly have thought that he could run for president and that this would not come out? How massive an ego do you have to have to believe that despite history, despite your fellow southerner Bill Clinton, you were immune? Suppose he had won the nomination? What the f*** would we Democrats do now? Didn't that even enter his mind?
Did we sense that there was something else beneath the polished exterior? That there other contradictions besides the one between the humble beginnings and the passionate advocacy of the poor and the personal extravagance?
How does this keep happening?
Check the political sex scandals on wikipedia. Southern boys by no means are a majority of those on the list. Actually, it seems to me that Californians make up a disproportionate number of the entries:
http://en.
See also http://www
I just read via the Washington Post that Ms Hunter does not want the paternity test that would clear up the question of who fathered her child. The more that I read about Hunter's life, she makes Monica Lewinsky seem like The Flying Nun! Albeit a better living one, as she (and Andrew Young -- the possible baby daddy fall taker) live in their multi-million dollar homes paid for by a former John Edwards aide (another tidbit first uncovered by the Enquirer)!
I don't expect a perfect President. But haven't we all learned the need for a truthful one? Lies and cover ups often come back to haunt and WEAKEN presidents and other politicians -- Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton learned this the hard way. Now we have John Edwards and Kwame Kilpatrick. As for baby daddy cover ups, did we learn nothing from Jesse Jackson (who had the nerve to counsel the Clinton's on marital fidelity!).
John Edwards had the nerve to criticize Bill Clinton for his mistakes and lies, and here he is the same kind of man. Perhaps worse, since Edward's cheated on a wife suffering with cancer. I don't know how much time that Elizabeth has left, but if that baby is his (which would make him a cheat and liar while his wife has struggled for life), and he's denying this little girl, he'll prove himself the lowest form of dog.
The cumulative effect of these extramarital escapades by our top political leaders - Clinton, Spitzer, Edwards, Giuliani, McCain - surely drives up the cynicism the public has for politicians. What does it say about their judgment? How can we entrust the most important decisions of state to these liars and hypocrites? When the electorate crosses a certain threshold of cynicism, it doesn't care who it votes for - "they are all the same", as many declared in 2000, with terrible consequences for the country. Thanks a lot, Edwards! Your flawed judgment may well cost Democrats plenty this election cycle.
Ms. Gable acts if Edwards' affair negates all the good and true things he put forth during his presidential campaign. Actually, his affair, tawdry and shameful as it may be, has little to do with the validity of his populist platform. Why are we being so puritanical about this? He made a bad mistake. Now let him get over it and get back to work. And we should do the same.
It's about trust, not trysts.
It's not that Edwards had a tryst, it's about the cover up.
It wasn't that Bill Clinton and Monica had fun under his desk. It was about his lying denials and the cover up.
It wasn't that Richard Nixon knew of the Watergate burglary. It was about his lying denials and the cover up.
If someone lies about this and that, what else would they lie about?
Someone in the public sector with major skeletons in the closet is untrustworthy and vulnerable to bribes, blackmail or some other form of compromising coercion.
If we set the bar for trust a bit too high, I would rather have it too high than too low.
Any U.S. voters for a batchelor President? Like the former Governor of New York, Edwards believed he could delude the papperazzi(sp?) whose ferreting power excede or match those of the KGB? Political campaigns involve/touch just too many people many of whom live rel. dull/subordinate lives, have axes to grind, are not above venality..
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