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John Edwards is reminding me more and more of poor Henry Cisneros, who was on his way to becoming the Latino Obama before he cheated on his saintly wife, Mary Alice, while she was pregnant with their third child, a son born with no spleen and a malformed heart and stomach. Bill Clinton asked Cisneros to serve as his housing secretary anyway, a few years later, and by then, the affair was such old news that it never even came up during his confirmation hearings. Yet in the course of his background check for the cabinet post, Cisneros lied to the FBI—not about whether he was supporting his former mistress, but about the amount he paid her—and as a result, was subjected to a four-year investigation by a special prosecutor, a probe that cost taxpayers $9 million. Heck of a public servant, Henry, so big-hearted and capable; watching him work a crowd in San Antonio back in the day, you'd have sworn you were looking at the future. But at some point after he stopped paying Linda Medlar, she started taping their phone calls, and triggered the investigation. When the judge who presided over his trial finally asked Cisneros why he'd lied in the first place, he explained that while he wasn't positive himself about the amount he'd paid Medlar, he was positive he didn't want his wife to know how high that figure was. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor, and when he left public life, we all lost out. So, what's the relevance?
First, it's that scary as we wives can be, federal investigators are scarier, and if any of the $15,000 a month that's being paid to Edwards' ex-girlfriend came from campaign funds, I cannot overemphasize how seldom fudging the facts with the Feds works out. Second, what do Monica Lewinsky, Linda Medlar, and Rielle Hunter have in common? All were employees, and world-class blabbermouths. (You never really hear about the guys who get involved with the quiet types, do you?) It's silly to say we don't care if politicians fool around as long as they don't lie about it; how is that supposed to work? (Though if we replaced those one-minute morning speeches they give in Congress with a daily adultery roll call, CSPAN would definitely do some box office.) And until we figure it out, we're stuck pretending these people are perfect and then, when we find out otherwise, pretending we're surprised.
As it is, we're so perplexed about how to treat this stuff I can't even tell what this first-person Newsweek piece is trying to say. In it, reporter Jonathan Darman tells about his own adventures with Rielle Hunter, a woman so fascinating that after meeting her on a trip to Iowa with Edwards in 2006, Darman spends weeks trying to track her down and months getting to know her. After concluding she's an unreliable source, he keeps in touch anyway: "I continued to see her. ... I liked Rielle'' and "let her do my astrological chart.'' From the way he describes their boozy first lunch, I can't tell if he suspected she and Edwards were carrying on or not: Is the tone confessional because he missed the story, because he had the story and sat on it, or because he fell for the "I can tell you're an old soul'' hoodoo himself? (The last guy I knew who talked like that wound up blowing town with the life savings of several women who each thought they were going to marry him and start an ashram.) Hunter told Darman that in this incarnation, she wanted to help Edwards become a transformational figure on a par with Gandhi or MLK; better luck next time?
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Just a couple of questions are clouding my understanding of all this, counselor, and stuff I'd still like to know includes:
Was all this going on when you renewed your wedding vows last summer at that intimate backyard ceremony where you wrote your own vows and there was not a dry eye in the house? (The one your wife of 30 years lost weight for, because she wanted to look pretty for you and fit into her wedding dress?)
Is this why you keep losing your wedding ring?
When Elizabeth waited to tell you that she had a lump in her breast the size of a golf ball because she swore to God after Wade died she'd never give you any bad news ever again ... your way of repaying her was with the news you'd betrayed her, Cate, Wade's memory, and the babies she gladly took dangerous hormones to conceive? Got it.
Oh, and just one more: Remember all those holier-than-Bill Clinton remarks? So do I. If you think anyone in the universe believes your beyond Clinton-esque "I was standing on one foot when we did it so it doesn't count'' nonsense, or cares whether you used the L-word, or trusts for a single segundo that you're not the baby daddy? I think you're about to find out how cold it can get in summer, senator.
And as for you, Miss Hunter? Even if all your dreams one day come true, life as the second Mrs. de Winter is going to look pleasant by comparison.
P.S. post interview: So sue me—anybody know a good lawyer?—but I can't help feeling just a little bit sorry for the whole human race when I see just one more ninny who threw it all away for five minutes with an 80s coke—nope, not gonna fall into that blame-the-woman trap. I don't know why Edwards kept repeating, "This is my fault and no one else's.' (Duh.) Nerves, I guess.
The most unbelievable part of the interview was when he said his buddy Fred Baron, formerly of Baron & Budd, had been paying his former mistress $15,000 a month behind his back; dude, you can lie better than that! Baron is a big Dallas lawyer who made his $$ suing people for asbestos exposure, even when there were no damages. I was in his house once a million years ago, for a party he threw when a friend of mine married one of his law partners, and asbestos has been very good to him, even if I do recall my fellow working stiffs from the paper standing around the pool making fun of his ugly art; that's what happens when you invite a bunch of reporters into chi-chi Preston Hollow. A little while back, Baron even sued his own law firm, so the idea that this total shark would lay out 15 large a month just for grins and all on his own is the lamest load of hooey I've heard outside a campaign ad.
But—yes, Mickey, this is the moment you've been waiting for—there is also no getting around the fact that Elizabeth was flat wrong, too, after she found out about the affair, not to tell him in no uncertain terms that he would not be running in '08 after all, for the good of the party if nothing else. I'm sure they convinced themselves that what he had to offer the country was worth the risk, but it wasn't, and that is some major enabling she was involved in; the Democrats are darn lucky they got No Drama Obama instead.
Melinda Henneberger will be chatting on Washingtonpost.com about the Edwards affair at 2 p.m. today. Send her a question!
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OK, here's a question: Years before the sex-scandal press conference or the chunky pearls, do political wives see their husbands differently than the rest of us see the mere mortals we promised to love, honor and so on? Obviously, there's no one model for a marriage in the public eye, any more than there is for a marriage only the neighbors care about—and even then, not that much as long as you keep the noise down. But I do wonder whether some of these spouses don't end up extra disillusioned because they're required to put their mates on the kind of pedestal that Mr. Ellen Tien has never set foot on. (No, that most certainly does not mean that whatever happens is on them, especially since idealizing these politicians is such a big part of their job description.) And yes, I am thinking all this because of the current John Edwards scandal, and because to say that Elizabeth believes in John is like saying that Washington is on the warm side this time of year, or Middlemarch is not a bad book.
But most mates of the contenders seem to feel that way—or maybe it only looks like that because when they don't appear to believe their men were born in a manger, we totally freak out, like how dare Teresa Heinz mention her deceased husband, the father of her children, and how unheard of for Michelle Obama to remark upon even the most minute and mundane of her husband's flaws. I keep thinking about Cindy McCain, when her husband was running the first time, telling me that she found her husband "a real inspiration'' -- and then stopping herself, quite charmingly, and adding, "I guess anyone would say that about their husband.'' No, they wouldn't; in fact, outside the bubble, I've never heard any woman say, suggest, hint, or infer any such thing, no matter how nice her husband or contented her marriage. So, without letting any of these guys off the hook, I guess my question is, isn't the public's demand for a mythic narrative that no actual person can ever live up to part of the problem?
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Melinda, I don't mean to sound calloused and insensitive on top of my stated willingness to invade personal privacy, but, notwithstanding how plucky and determined she is, Elizabeth Edwards has inoperable metastasized cancer. Cancer grows, that's its job (though, to be sure, effective treatment can slow it way down and seems to be doing so for Edwards). Of course, one hopes for a miraculous survivor story, but a practical conversation about the other woman who might someday be raising her children is, though unimaginably difficult, not inappropriate.
I had breast cancer in 1995 and share Melinda's post-surgical hopefulness. If I'd had a less positive outlook, however, I would certainly have wanted my husband to remarry someone who could be a mother to my then-minor child. (I would, however, expect him to sequence the two events more traditionally than John Edwards has.) Now that Edwards must, as Emily Y. points out, inevitably exit political life, the next order of business should be the welfare of all his young children.
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Anyway, Hanna, we agree that the Edwards family should be left alone. (And post-Alberto Gonzales, an AG whose biggest problem is a baby? Sounds good!) My son's question wasn't a hard one as in, "Uh-oh, what to say?' Just sad, as in another person he looked up to turned out to be human. Which is part of growing up, yes, but depressing all the same.
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No, I don't mean cancer should be kept under wraps. I just meant that for a prospective first lady, Elizabeth Edwards behaved more like a 24-year-old blogger. (Here's the link, which someone just sent me). I meant this admiringly; I deeply respect people who repeatedly, compulsively overshare, especially in public. And the voters loved it as well. And I have to say, I don't think your son's question is such a hard one. I mean, I'm not sure how much you divulge to a preteen, because I don't have one of those yet. But we are all complicated people. Edwards' concern for poverty seems to me to have nothing to do with his affair. Whereas how priests behave with children entrusted to their care has everything to do with their pastoral fitness. Ditto with Larry Craig, and his anti-gay votes. We can make distinctions here. Having an affair says something about a person—maybe a lot about a person. But it does not devalue their entire public career.
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While we are quoting ourselves today: In December I wrote a profile of Elizabeth Edwards for the New Republic (which for some reason is not showing up online). My main point was that Elizabeth has an overshare problem. In her book, on the campaign trail, to her friends, she spills everything—everything—freely: about her son who died, her cancer, her marriage, her other kids. Now the tell-all strategy which has served her so well in the past has come back to bite her. So she—the real victim of this story—would be hard pressed to unleash her fury at the press.
But I will do it for her. There is no reason on earth I can think of to have run this story, much less stalked the guy at a hotel. Public figure? Who isn't a public figure? Unless the guy is having Nazi orgies in a brothel, this seems a pretty weak excuse. Vice -presidential candidate? Also weak. That was hardly likely, and you can kill that with rumors. Jack Shafer's hypocrisy argument I find totally unconvincing. The kind of hypocrisy that counts is when someone's public position is at odds with their private behavior. If Larry Craig votes against all gay rights legislation but solicits gay sex, then the gay community is allowed to out him. Ditto Pastor Ted Haggard, who preached weekly on the evils of gayness. But when a man says he's not having an affair when he is—that's just lying, same as most men would do in that circumstance. There are honorable reasons to lie in such a situation—namely, protecting your wife and children. We are still in the private realm here. This is just one of those cases where the press gets into a froth merely because the guy lied about something they thought they had him on, and then late one night they all made a bet to screw him. No honor there, no larger purpose served.