I finally made myself watch most of the ABC Nightline interview with John Edwards where he admitted he's been lying for months about this affair. It was blood-curdlingly distasteful. It felt like he's upset he got caught. The non-segueway-way he brought up John McCain's old affair was much more serpentine than the way he kept bringing up Dick Cheney's gay daughter in 2004.
When I told my wife, "Guess who had an affair?" and it was him, she didn't even blink. There was something already slimy about Edwards, something untrustworthy, and this just highlighted it. But man, I feel for his wife.
Now some may ask, how is this different than the affairs of other politicians? Well, in many ways it isn't. It's not the adultery; it's the lying and cover-up. When Bill and Hillary appeared in 1992 and Bill admitted he'd "caused pain" in their marriage, a lot of people figured out what that meant, and Democrats still felt good about having him be their nominee. Edwards knew if he admitted in 2007, the year he announced he was running for president, that he'd had an affair the year before, he knew he wouldn't become president.
McCain's affair about 27 years ago is known. If it came out he'd had an affair two years ago, you'd see an open convention. If Newt Gingrich had run for president, he would not have secured the nomination. There's way too much footage of Gingrich denouncing Clinton's sex scandal when he was having an affair of his own.
The question is asked is if the Edwards will hurt Democrats in general. Not really. It will hurt politicians in general. We've set up our system so that many good people would stay away from the process, and of those who dare join, it seems to attract egomaniacs who think they're infallible (Elliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevey, Mark Foley, Bob Livingston, etc.)
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