No one has mentioned the name John Edwards since his marriage scandal killed his political career. Even as the National Enquirer continues to pursue stories about his alleged love child and disqualify his half-hearted mea-culpa maneuvers, I can't understand how such a once-respected politician, the last of the so-called "good guys," could disrespect his ailing wife and family and throw away his life and career to pursue an extracurricular love life. Didn't he learn anything from Bill Clinton, Elliot Spitzer and all the others? As far as I am concerned a fellow this dumb would never have made it as president.
But the Edwards story isn't over yet. The tabloids seem determined to keep trying to bust open the whole truth about this politician's cover-up. It's worse than the others in some ways. First, he used his children and his wife's illness as campaign props. Remember him proudly stating his wife urged him to run and pursue his dreams despite her cancer battle? Remember on the campaign trail all the family posed photographs straight out of a Hallmark card? Add that to his run-around media interview where he just didn't seem sorry enough. He just doesn't get it. If he was going to come clean he needed to do it fully, not with half-statements and half-truths. I don't want to hear his gratuitous proclamations that he is willing to take a paternity test when his mistress has gone off into hiding and won't even offer the child's DNA sample to "clear the air." Wouldn't the first thing a mistress would want is to clear her and her child's name from continued (and often vicious) media scrutiny? Now consider the additional circumstances of having one Edwards' crony paying her thousands a month in living expenses and another who is married with children oddly claiming that he is the father. To me, it smacks of a diabolical cover-up.
Edwards' explanation that he made this error because he became a narcissist is absurd. The very definition of a narcissist is someone whose sense of self is so distorted they don't even recognize they are narcissistic. And then let's remember his proclamation that he "doesn't love" his mistress, and of course the most bruising admission of all--that his wife's cancer was in remission when he cheated. The more excuses he made the worse he became. Now he is a has-been. All the work and grooming done to cultivate an image of a hometown, choir boy, folksy, soft-spoken, elegant family man and noble politician is erased. The real John Edwards stood up and he is just too textbook-prepared and overly scripted to ever appear credible again.
