The Democrats' Twisted Morality

Revelations of an extra-marital affair two years ago by former North Carolina senator John Edwards has led the Democratic Party to not only reject the possibility of him running again for vice-president but to rule out allowing him to give his widely-anticipated address before the national convention. According to former Democratic National Committee chair Don Fowler, Edwards no longer meets the "high moral standards" expected of those given such a prominent role in the party's quadrennial gathering.

At the 2004 convention, however, the party leadership apparently saw no violations of its "high moral standards" in Edwards' decision less than two years earlier to co-sponsor the resolution authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq on the false grounds that that country still had "weapons of mass destruction" and posed a threat to U.S. national security, a decision he was still steadfastly defending at that time.

In fact, despite Edwards' key role in making possible an illegal and immoral war of aggression, the Democratic Party not only provided him with a prime time address at their convention that year, he was rewarded with their nomination for vice-president of the United States.

In other words, the Democratic Party apparently believes that leading our country into a disastrous war on false pretenses, a decision which has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and has brought untold suffering to millions, is of significantly less moral consequence than committing adultery.

Rewarding Edwards' Earlier Moral Lapses

In September 2002, in the face of growing public skepticism over the Bush administration's calls for an invasion of Iraq, Senator Edwards rushed to the defense of the White House in an op-ed article published in the Washington Post. In his commentary, Edwards claimed that Iraq was "a grave and growing threat" and that Congress should therefore "endorse the use of all necessary means to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."

In reality, as was widely assumed by most independent strategic analysts based upon available data at that time and has subsequently been acknowledged by Edwards himself, Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" and offensive delivery systems had been eliminated years earlier, he no longer had the capacity to produce new WMDs, and was therefore no longer a threat.

Furthermore, in support of the Bush administration's efforts to repudiate the United States' obligations under international law and to undermine the United Nations and the post-1945 international legal order, Edwards also insisted in his Washington Post article that "We must not tie our own hands by requiring Security Council action."

Following the invasion, despite the absence of the WMDs, the WMD programs, and the WMD delivery systems he falsely insisted Iraq still possessed, Edwards defended his support for the U.S. conquest anyway, indicating that these ostensible security concerns were simply the excuse, rather than the actual reason, for his support of a U.S. invasion and occupation of that oil-rich country. In an interview on Meet the Press that November, Tim Russert asked the North Carolina senator whether he regretted having given Bush "in effect a blank check for the war in Iraq." Edwards replied by saying, "I still believe it was right."

During his first run for the presidency in 2004, amid growing reports of widespread and systematic violations of international humanitarian law by U.S. forces and increasing public opposition to the war, Edwards continued to defend the occupation and supported a series of resolutions sending hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars to support Bush's military conquest.

Virtually every mainline Protestant denomination in the country, as well as the Catholic Church, had already gone on record declaring that the U.S. invasion of Iraq did not constitute a just war, was not morally defensible, and that the country's resources should be redirected toward meeting human needs. Indeed, the vast majority of both religious and secular ethicists in this country weighed in against the very policies so vigorously supported by John Edwards during the 2002-2004 period.

As a result of all this, if the Democratic Party was really concerned about a politician's sense of morality, there would have been plenty of grounds to have marginalized John Edwards at the 2004 Democratic convention.

Yet, despite all this, he was rewarded with the nomination for vice-president over scores of qualified and experienced Democratic leaders who took more principled and moral stands on these and other critical policy issues.

Punishing Edwards' Turn to the Left

Since stepping down from the Senate in 2005 and launching his second bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, Edwards appears to have undergone a genuine moral reawakening. Not only did he call for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, he -- unlike Senator Hillary Clinton -- formally apologized for his support for the invasion. He called for greater U.S. support for international humanitarian law and a major re-evaluation of U.S. foreign policy. Most notably, he rejected the neo-liberal international economic policies of the Clintons and the Democratic Party establishment, condemned the economic and political abuses of corporate elites, and came to champion the interests of the poor and middle class in ways few serious candidates for president in this country have done for decades.

This became a problem for the Democratic Party establishment, which has long had close relations with the Pentagon and major corporations. There was a clear discomfort over the prospects of Edwards becoming Obama's running mate or even just giving a major address before a nationally-televised audience where he would likely stress the moral imperative of America's social responsibility to its poor and the need to challenge powerful corporate interests.

Revelations of Edwards sexual indiscretion -- which had been rumored for many months but mysteriously became public just two weeks before the convention -- have provided the Democratic Party with the excuse they were looking for to rule out Edwards running as their vice-presidential nominee for a second time as well as to deny Edwards a podium for his populist message at the convention.

The Washington Post reported that top aides to presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama acknowledged that, in addition to having already dropped Edwards from the short list of possible running mates, "they had been moving to avoid having Edwards speak at this month's national party convention even before his admission."

The recent revelations have also given an excuse for the Democrats to deny the increasingly progressive former senator any policy-making position in the foreseeable future. The Post article quotes Fowler as insisting that "any role for Edwards in a potential Obama administration is 'dead'."

Ironically, former president Bill Clinton, whose marital infidelities by most accounts far surpass those of the more left-leaning Edwards, has been offered a major prime time speech before the convention. In addition, Obama has publicly declared that Clinton, a strident backer of neo-liberal economic policies, will play an important advisory role in his administration.

Yet what is perhaps most revealing in the contrast between the Democratic Party leadership's treatment of John Edwards in 2004 and in 2008 is their apparent belief that having an extra-marital affair is significantly worse than being, as a result of his role as an enthusiastic co-sponsor of the Iraq war resolution, an accessory to mass murder.

It is also profoundly disappointing that Obama -- who, despite the North Carolina senator's earlier war-mongering, praised Edwards in his 2004 keynote address before the Democratic National Convention -- apparently agrees with these distorted priorities.

One cannot help but wonder whether a party and a candidate with such a twisted sense of morality really deserves to win in November.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco.

Comments

[tbone99]

Bad timing - if it was 2 years from now the whole affair thing would be a vague memory. But revealing it now makes his participation in the convention subject the party to accusations of immorality , poor family values. blah ,blah, blah.

Face it - John has a lot to do to get his personal life back in order.
It seems the state of the country was not highest on John's list of priorities even when he was running.
Do we really need people with that kind of cavaliar attitude making policy .?

[riverhippie]

Mr. Zunes, if your now going to throw Edwards under the bus for his support of the war, how about the other Democratic Senators who voted for the Iraq War Resolution? The Democrats had control of the Senate and could have put the invasion off for almost a year. 29 Democrats voted for it, 21 against. The Republicans voted 48 for, 1 against.

Bayh, Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, Daschele, and so forth.

I'm pretty sure Kerry did some speaking at the convention too.

[S1m0n]

"Edwards' turn to the left" is skin-deep. When he had power, he didn't vote for any of the the causes he claimed to be running on this time. As Russ Feinberg pointed out here on Huff, "He's running on MY record!" not his own.

So, what changed? Clearly it's not anything in Edwards, so it must have been a reflection of where the open ground was in the primary. John Edwards and his strategists looked at who was running and their platforms, and must have decided that leftward lay the promised land, at least until the end of the primary, that is. If Edwards had won, that's the last the left would ever have seen of him; he'd be charging for the center as fast as his cheating legs could take him.

[riverhippie]

Even Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry:

The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation." -- John Kerry, October 9, 2002

As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." -- Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998

[riverhippie]

He's not the only one:

The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002

There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
-- Hillary Clinton on October 10, 2002

[areaman03]

Remember that in 2004, conventional wisdom had not yet turned against our Iraq misadventures, and tacit support of the war was still being parsed from support of how it had been conducted. I always took Edwards' "awakening" on the issue in this recent election to be necessary politically in order to differentiate himself from Sen. Clinton, who had NOT shown any regret on the matter.

I think it's absolutely appropriate for the democrats to avoid having Mr. Edwards speak at the convention. No, he didn't kill anyone or break any laws, but frankly, his transgression is a radioactive one in our era of hyper-analysis and over-analysis in the media. Why give the republicans anything so easy to mount a distraction?

And, I've got to say this... I never bought Edwards' "progressive, populist" talk. Are you kidding me? What progressive, populist legislation can he point to during his time in office? More so than any other candidate in the past two elections, Edwards always felt the most "off the shelf" when it came to policy positions. A lot of Edwards supporters try to act like his recent troubles really aren't all that important--that its just a distraction from his populist vision.... Frankly, I think enough has come out in the past few weeks that these people should really start to question whether Edwards is who they thought he was all along, rather than spout nonsense about how its some sort of centrist conspiracy to marginalize him.

[TommyMcCarthy]

The aristocracy absolutely HATES it when one of thier own goes out among we rabble spouting populist rhetoric.....
but will quickly forgive,.... provided its just political posturing,....and the joke remains on "the rubes"

But if one is found to actually be SERIOUS about fundamentally altering the ecomonic and political landscape? ....That's the way to be truly hated.......
tm

[joebiz]

It take a leap of increadible faith to equate Edwards' personal and sexual daliances and the invasion of Iraq. One is a personal "failure" on the projection perception while the other is the perception of failure.

At a critical moment in American electoral history, the Democrats are rightly playing the perceprtion game as they should. Democrats have been perceived as playing loose with personal resposibility and sexual politics. One can remember the infidelity whispers of Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Clinton bandied about. While having a child out of wedlock is not the moral equivalent of invading a country and leaving entire generation "fatherless"; Democrats must show a higher level of personal resposibility in the face of new political challenges. Obama seems to be calling on that new and expected set of values.

As for Edwards being shunned, he missed the lessons from history. It's what been called "fortuna."

Machiavelli says:

"Fortune only rules one half of men's fate, the other half being of their own will." Machiavelli reminds the reader that Fortune is a woman, that she favours a strong, or even violent hand, and the she favours the more aggressive and bold young man than a timid elder.

[HUFFNAME]

Thank you.

That Zunes teaches politics at a university and doesn't apreciate these things is astounding.

[mgh234]

hindsight is 20/20, those voting for the war did not know it would turn out so poorly, did not know the intelligence was faulty, and did not know Bush would abuse the resolutions they passed. If the Iraq war had succeeded, which it very well may have if the WH didn't mismanage it (something the legislature had little power over), those voting against it would've certainly been purged.

On the other hand, adultery is objectively wrong and not outcome dependant. Furthermore, his wife had cancer, and he ran his campaign basiclaly on morality.


in terms of impact, the iraq war obviously had a lot more repercussions...but in terms of personal character, cheating on your wife is a 1000 times less moral than voting for a war you thought would turn out well.

[Grunty1]

"did not know the intelligence was faulty, and did not know Bush would abuse the resolutions they passed"

They would have known if they bothered to READ the intelligence. Many of them admitted that they did not. And if I knew the later, how could not graduates from the top colleges in the country and lawyers besides forsee the possiblity and prevent it with a few strokes of their pens?

[UnbiasView]

Good Ole' John Edwards . . . you know he won "Father of the Year" in 2007 . . . gotta love it.

[justinmeister]

It's not about morality, it's about politics. Obviously, voting for the Iraq war was worse, but at this place in time, the affair is a bigger deal (as stupid as it is).

It makes sense to try and prevent the news coverage of the convention from being bogged down by more talk of the affair.

[OnTheCusp]

Go tell it to Larry Craig.