Let me try this entry again. The last one devolved into a shitfest of insults and name calling.
John Edwards, like other men throughout history who had high ambitions and lots of self-confidence, succumbed to his baser desires and got in involved with and/or fell in love with a woman and didn’t tell his wife. Let’s remember he now has a child of that affair, and might be cherishing that child a little more than he would otherwise had he not lost his son some years back. I’ll assume that’s true. My view of human behavior tells me that’s likely or certainly not unheard of.
Why Edwards is being excoriated so gleefully and judgmentally perplexes me. His behavior wasn’t any more egregious than people you or I might know personally, or JFK sneaking his paramours into the White House, yet we don’t judge him as harshly. Newt Gingrich was actually garnering votes in recent primaries and caucuses and you don’t hear much outrage about that. The FEC hasn’t put fifty-six agents on his ass. Eliot Spitzer had an affair with a prostitute with probably no emotional attachment whatsoever; just meaningless sex, and after resigning his office (prematurely, I thought) has come back, and his career is doing just fine, and he’s still married. All these men have redeemed themselves in the public eye, but like hungry dogs, people don’t want to let go of Edwards’s failings and misdeeds. (I won’t say “mistakes” because a mistake is when you put on a brown sock and a blue sock.)
What is it about Johnny that people hate so much? The vehemence seems so over the top as to bespeak a deeper phenomenon than just disgust at bad behavior.
Is it because he was an exceptionally successful lawyer, and it’s de rigueur that everybody hate the lawyers?
He was a lawyer who stood up for the little guy and won. Have we become a nation that disdains success, perhaps for the way it makes us feel about our own lives? Have we so little regard for the law and have a bit too much reverence for the corporate masters he sued and won against?
Is it because he’s handsome and fit and American men feel insecure in comparison?
Is it because women are crushed that the cad didn’t stay faithful to his sick wife?
Is it because his wife was successful in the end in portraying herself as the victim and he the thoughtless cad?
I’ve worked with plaintiffs’ lawyers and respect them greatly, and the best of the best are like Edwards who take on the big monied interests, not for the paycheck, although nobody should work for free, but for the rightness of the cause AND to change the laws and regulations to prevent future harm and discrimination. That kind of work should be celebrated and held up as a model, but instead, we mock and denigrate lawyers who do this kind of work. “Ambulance chasers.” “Shysters.” Until we need one. Disdaining success seems like more of the anti-intellectualism, anti-learning, anti-science, anti-everything progressive mindset that is so pervasive in this country. And it’s holding us back.
But I digress.
My thoughts are that, as far as I know and believe (not being privy to his secrets), Edwards got involved with Rielle Hunter before his wife became ill. If that’s not the case, I’d like to know that, but I believe that is the timeline. I’ve also heard that the Edwardses’ marriage was , ahem, less than ideal before he ran for office. Several sources report that Elizabeth Edwards was often angry and often cruel to John and staff members, and was what several characterized as abusive and cruel. This doesn’t become less important because she’s dead of cancer. It still matters to the situation of his marriage falling apart, and it takes two to make a marriage; you’ve heard the clichés. Since I wasn’t there, I will rely on respected reporters who put these accounts in books, knowing none of it is written in stone or proven categorically, but it’s probably more likely true than not true. I will believe them over angry, indignant, outraged supporters of Elizabeth after the fact. Seems fair to me.
Can some answer me in a respectful manner why Edwards is so reviled while others who did far worse are forgiven? Is it too soon? How soon is too soon? Personally, I’m much more disgusted with Andrew Young, Edwards’s unfaithful rat of an aid, who participated in the cover-up of the affair and the pregnancy, and then profited greatly when he revealed the secrets he promised to hold.
Another tragedy of this whole affair is that Edwards didn’t go on to become attorney general, because Eric Holder has been milquetoast and a a disappointment, while Edwards as AG probably would have taken it to the wrongdoers, no holds barred. That was his legal style anyway, so it’s a reliable guide. I hope he doesn’t lose his license to practice law.
I think the Edwards scandal says more about Puritanical, hypocritical, unrealistic, childish American public than it says about anything else, and it’s a sad commentary at that.