Cheat to Win – Slapstick (from Slapstick)
I always disliked John Edwards. I never felt good about it, because I couldn’t ever quite explain what it was about the guy that put me so on edge. All other things equal, I tended to agree with his policy positions more than the other ‘major’ candidates in 2008. And I wasn’t excited about suddenly finding myself being one of those people that voted on amorphous things like ‘character’ and ‘gut feeling.’
It didn’t help that he decided that the form of populism he was going to push was so anti-trade. I love that he made poverty a priority and pushed health care reform and all that. But I don’t see those things as synonymous with the sorts of tariffs and trade restrictions that he was yelling about.
But if I was honest with myself I had to admit that that issue was more a post-facto justification for having already rejected him. Because the thing that really got me was that he just felt so smarmy. I never really believed in him, and felt there was something I just fundamentally couldn’t trust. Even as someone who cares a LOT about the minutia of policy wonkery and who feels a lot of distaste at the “I just trust that person” method of choosing political leaders…I couldn’t get past it. I agreed with a lot of Edwards platform but simply couldn’t imagine wanting him to be in charge.
Of course, with several years of perspective, it turns out that my gut feeling was totally right. His affair and subsequent dealings paint the picture of someone I would not want leading the country.
Which is not to say that I think private sexual issues themselves constitute a reason for rejecting a person. I thought the whole impeachment charade with Clinton was a blight on our politics. And I frankly can’t work up much outrage about David Vitter or Eliot Spitzer or Mark Sanford or whatever. And to the extent that I do get up in arms about that stuff it’s when the public and private selves reveal a massive hypocrisy. When the Republican Party wants to regulate private sexual behavior it’s a bigger deal if the tub-thumpers for that cause reveal themselves to be just as dirty as the next folks. And closeted politicians who push an anti-gay agenda probably deserve a bit of scorn. And if you’re breaking the law in significant ways to fulfill your sexual interests that obviously matters. But really, I’m not ever going to push for someone to get kicked out of office simply because of who they sleep with.
And, generally speaking, I think that’s where a lot of the public is. David Vitter is still in the Senate. Newt Gingrich never got a lot of flak about his affairs. Giuliani managed to get by without a lot of questions. McCain’s stuff with his first wife was off-bounds. And so on.
So I’m curious about why the Edwards thing became so immediately toxic. I remember the day the rumors were confirmed. The general consensus was that ‘this guy is 100% done in politics.’ There was no speculation that he could even TRY to recover. To some extent, that’s because there was no constituency that stuck by his side. His Democratic allies felt no compunctions about kicking him to the curb. In the other direction, if the Republicans in the Senate aren’t going to shun David Vitter, why should we expect the media to?
But I think it has a lot more to do with the underlying dynamic that had already driven him out of the primary. People just kind of felt, deep-down, that this guy was not to be trusted with our politics, our country. And when it turned out that he made such an epic disaster of his own personal life, it just seemed like confirmation of what we already knew.
Result: I was not remotely surprised when all this came out. And I think a lot of other people felt the same way. It just seemed like the sort of thing I already expected out of him. In part because he’s a politician (and sex scandals for politicans shouldn’t be any more suprising than steroids scandals with professional atheletes), but in part because of what I could glean about him in particular.
Looking back, I think I seriously *underestimated* the irresponsibility of this guy. It’s profoundly disturbing that someone could seek the Democratic nomination while KNOWING that this was all out there. It’s one thing to cheat on your spouse. But then there’s cheating on your spouse who has cancer, failing to use protection, having a child with the other woman, trying to get a friend to pretend to be the father, getting your supporters to try and buy off the other woman. And then, in the immediate aftermath you launch a presidental campaign rested in no small part on the strong relationship between you and your awesome wife. And to top it all off, you risk the absolute worst case scenario of this stuff all getting revealed in the weeks or even DAYS leading up to the election.
Imagine, just imagine, that Edwards had won the nomination. And then in September or October all of this stuff came out. How many states do you think he’d have won? Single digits? People might eventually come to forgive a politician, but that stuff takes time, at an absolute minimum.
So Edwards launched his campaign KNOWING what kind of danger he was putting the Party (and the country) in. What kind of an ego does that take? What kind of judgment does it imply? What lack of concern for all the policies, principles, and ideas you supposedly stood for. To sublimate all of that underneath your own ambition…
That’s not something people are likely to forgive. It’s more than a little bit scary to imagine someone that reckless running the country.