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Sunday, May 10, 2009
"Elizabeth is not really a member of the reality-based community." Melinda Henneberger wrote an informative but ... incomplete look "inside the Edwards marriage" for Slate in 2007. The scales have now fallen from Henneberger's eyes! In an excellent post-Oprah column, she outlines Elizabeth Edwards' "surreal" structure of denial and her drive for publicity:
The bottom line in Elizabeth World is that "I have a husband who adores me, who's unbelievable with my children, who's provided for us in ways we never could have imagined.''
"He's fed you,'' Oprah puts in. "He has,'' Elizabeth agrees.
One of the things she feels he's given her is light - and spotlight. In explaining why it was important to her that "this person's'' name not be mentioned, she says that anyone who would "work at destroying my family and my home in order to get in that light, I'm really not interested in them being in that light too much. It's not about this woman. It's about this family.''
So, get out of my shot?
Of course, without Rielle Hunter Elizabeth wouldn't have this big a spotlight. ... Henneberger also offers more evidence that one purpose of Elizabeth Edwards' seemingly destructive self-exposure is indeed to rehabilitate John ("'I think we're getting to a good place,' he says ...")
P.S.:
When Oprah remarks that hmm, she doesn't know a lot of men who would run off to a hotel somewhere in the middle of the night to hold a baby that wasn't theirs, she repeats her husband's lie - or maybe he'd repeated hers: "Golly, then you don't know that many politicians. We do it all the time. Holding babies is what we do.''
Did Elizabeth Edwards really say that? Does she really think it? The really alarming thing would be if she does. [Second thought: She can't possibly think it. That much self-delusion would be clinical. She's BSing. See Update below.**]
P.P.S.: I should have noted the impressively long period of tongue-tied fumfawing in Elizabeth Edwards' NPR interview after she is asked "Do your children have a sister?" Starts at around 6:38. ...
** Update--Three Theories of E: Of course, Henneberger's thesis--that Elizabeth lives in a semi-delusional world of her own--can itself become a form of exculpation. Elizabeth's in heavy denial, poor thing! But I'd say that, at best, the jury is still out on whether Elizabeth Edwards is 1) deluded (e.g., she actually believes the crap about how John "doesn't know any more than I do'' about whether he's the father of Rielle Hunter's daughter); 2) pretending to be deluded (e.g. she knows the truth but she's damned if she's going to admit it on her book tour); or 3) in it up to her eyeballs (i.e. she knows what she's saying is BS, but she's still actively covering up for John to further his ambitions as much as possible, given the circumstances).
How would saying she doesn't know if John's the father advance his interests under #3? That's easy. John hasn't said he doesn't know if he's the father. He has vehemently denied, in his televised Nightline "confession", that he could possibly be the father because he had ended the affair long before. ("I know that it's not possible that this child could be mine because of the timing of events, so I know it's not possible.") Admitting that he might be the father, and that this might be OK with his wife, is a useful halfway house on the road to confronting voters with the likely truth (he's the father and he lied about it even in his "confession.") If you were a PR agent retained by the Edwardses, this could well be the strategy you'd come up with.
That Elizabeth, in her current tour of interviews, doesn't even grapple with what now looks like his big Nightline lie--that he couldn't be the father--even as she substantively concedes it (by allowing that he could) gives support to view #3, no? Why isn't she more annoyed he lied on Nightline (and, presumably, to her)? Why ignore it? Come to think of it, Elizabeth herself once flat out denied, in one of her earlier damage control efforts, that John had fathered the child. Is delusion--at least non-clinical delusion--really the most plausible explanation for the seamless, unremarked shift in Elizabeth's own line---from righteous allegations of "wrongly alleged" to the solipsistic "whatever the facts are it doesn't change my life"? The shift fits awfully comfortably into the PR template for political survival famously sketched out by James Boyd--'Admit what is known. Deny what is unknown ....'
That MSM interviewers don't confront her with these contradictions says something too. ... Even Henneberger may have a few scales left to fall. .. 9:36 A.M.
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Limits of the Groucho Marx Principle: The Vanity Fair/Bloomberg party after the White House Correspondents' Dinner was so exclusive that nobody wanted to go. I think there's a Yogi Berra quote in there somewhere. ...
P.S.: Isn't the point of the modern White House Correspondents' Dinner (assuming it has one) to generate a culture clash between Hollywood and Washington, to revel in the discomfitting celebrity/nerd interface? That point's being lost as bigger and bigger celebrities demand (in some cases with good reason) exclusive partying room. At one event, they were penned in a narrow, brightly lit area as if they were prize animals on display. At least it was still awkward! Next year it will be less so, as Obama's D.C. becomes more skilled at star-greasing. ..
It's almost enough to make you long for the old days when reporters competed to invite the most notorious newsmakers, not the biggest entertainers--when the reigning ethic was: "We Had Hitler at Our Table!" (Mike Kinsley's joke). ..
Update: Rachel Sklar enjoyed it all way too much but is right about the importance of inviting lower-level sources. The event can also be a morale-booster for lower-level journalists (I can atttest). Both purposes are frustrated by Graydon Carter-style status segregation. ... 9:35 A.M.
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George Stephanopoulos reports that Edwards staffers now say they had a "doomsday" strategy in case they actually won the race they were being paid to win:
But by late December, early January of last year, several people in his inner circle began to think the rumors were true.
Several of them had gotten together and devised a "doomsday" strategy of sorts.
Basically, if it looked like Edwards was going to win the Democratic Party nomination, they were going to sabotage his campaign, several former Edwards' staffers have told me.
Reactions:
1) Which staffers? Not Joe Trippi, presumably--he says he didn't know the truth about Edwards' affair until the next summer. Jonathan Prince?
2) Mighty convenient for staffers to say this now, just when they were looking a) sleazy for staging the elaborate cover up that intimidated the press (not hard) and kept Democratic primary voters in the dark and b) like potential presidency-destroyers, if they'd nominated a candidate who was fated to implode either before or after the election. If this "doomsday" story is true, why didn't it come out last summer when Edwards "confessed" on Nightline? Or once Obama was safely elected?
3) Why not quit the campaign quietly (or noisily) when they learned the truth? Oh right, they were getting paid.
4) The staffers say they were "Democrats first," according to Stephanopoulos. By leaking this story now, during Elizabeth Edwards' "Why Am I Doing This?" Tour, are the staffers making a comment on Elizabeth's judgment or her party loyalty--suggesting she's maybe not a "Democrat first" but "Elizabeth first"? ...
5) How does Hillary Clinton feel about their willingness to let Edwards finish out his campaign? Edwards stayed in the race through the South Carolina primary, during which time he drained votes from somebody. I find it hard to believe he cost Hillary the nomination, but I wouldn't expect Mrs. Clinton to agree. It would be interesting if somebody attempted a thorough calculation of the effect of Edwards' presence. (By "somebody" I mean Nate Silver--who has already made a quickie run at Edwards' impact in Iowa.) ... 5/11 Update: Mark Blumenthal's calculation today is pretty thorough. His New Hampshire numbers seem especially devastating to the idea that Hillary would have benefitted from Edwards' absence. But, as Blumenthal notes, you can never respond conclusively to a conjecture that 'the whole dynamic of the race would have changed.' ... You could also speculate that Edwards' N.H. supporters lied to the pollsters Blumenthal cites--i.e. they were really non-black voters of the sort who would never have voted for Obama. (If only there were a name for this "effect.") ... I'd still be interested in what Nate SIlver's model shows--if I remember, it assumed that voters ethnicity (along with other demographic factors) was hugely predictive--suggesting Hillary might have picked up a lot of Edwards' white support in early primaries, no matter what a) "second choice" polls showed or b) what those voters told pollsters later in the race when Edwards finally dropped out. ...
6) What about all the Edwards volunteers who worked for him on the mistaken theory that he wasn't doomed? What about Edwards donors who gave him money on the same assumption? (Did any of these contributors donate after presentations by any of the Doomsday staffers? Isn't that a form of fraud?)
7) The strategy was to sabotage Edwards if he won, but let him live to fight another day if he lost. How was the latter a sufficient response? If the National Enquirer hadn't finally busted him, Edwards could have gone on to become Attorney General, or Supreme Court justice, or maybe a senator. Or were the staffers going to trigger the Doomsday Scenario if he came close to one of those offices? In any case, Edwards wasn't going to go away--he'd have continued to drain the time and energy of good-willed Democratic followers as he pursued whatever office he was pursuing.
Backfill: Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson made points 3, 4 and 5 on This Week. ...
Update: Edwards strategist Trippi calls the "doomsday" story "Complete BS." From CNN:
But Trippi, who worked closely with Edwards' most senior advisors, including Campaign Manager David Bonior and Deputy Campaign manager Jonathan Prince, suggested he would have been aware of a plan if one existed.
"I don't think there was an hour Prince wasn't with me," he said, adding later, "I can't conceive of how it was possible that if someone had a secret plan I wasn't aware of it."
Hmm. When Trippi was explaining to me why he wasn't part of the Edwards campaign's elaborate coverup, he emphasized his distance from the rest of the campaign--saying he "never got brought in" to the damage control efforts. "[Deputy campaign manager] Jonathan Prince and other people were dealing with it ... I was on the road a lot." [E.A.] He might not have been taken into the confidence of other Edwards aides, Trippi told me, because he'd worked for another candidate in 2004. "I was the Dean guy."
Now he's joined with Prince at the hip? I sense a tension between these two accounts! But I'm also skeptical of the "doomsday" story. (Maybe it was just a conversation or two between aides in the middle of the night that's now getting blown up into a bigger deal to save the aides' reps. ... On the other hand, you wouldn't have needed to an elaborate "plan" in order to "sabotage" the campaign. You'd have needed a dime.) ...
6:25 P.M.
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