He is a private person. He wasn’t running for anything when the Enquirer opened the peephole. Saying he had it coming because he was once a candidate for public office is just a rationalization.
If the Enquirer did the same thing to Sarah Palin, I think we’d see an about face in how a lot of people would respond to the publicization of a private citizen’s sex life.
The John Edwards story is exactly as significant and newsworthy as the Pam and Tommy fucktape.
It is relevant because it would’ve derailed the democratic party in 2008 had he won the nomination. It shows he has severe character and trust issues which are important to his role as political leader.
Not relevant, since he was no longer a candidate. What might have happened in an alternate universe is nice fodder for speculative fiction but is not news.
Wow, what a bitch. I can see why he cheated on her.
I resent having to look this up, but this is definitely not true at all. The facts are this: the New York Post published a blind gossip item about the affair in August 2007, and The Enquirer first reported on the affair in October 2007. He was still very much a candidate then. It’s true that there wasn’t much other proof and that nobody else picked it up until the following summer, after he dropped out of the campaign. But even then, he was scheduled to speak at the Democratic convention, and was still trying to get a job as Vice President or Attorney General (even if he didn’t have a prayer, which I suspect he didn’t).
John Edwards career is not necessarily over. We have history to back us up on that. Politicians have done these sorts of things, and even worse, and got elected.
Grover Cleveland got elected in 1884, even after reports surfaced in the press that he fathered anillegitimate child.
There’s Ted Kennedy, and the Chappaquiddick incident, which IMHO is much more damaging to ones imagine than an illegitimate child could ever be. He was re-elected and continued to serve for 40 years after that!
Marion Barry, mayor of DC, got arrested and served time for the possession and use of crack cocaine. He got out, and later got re-elected as mayor.
I don’t think you can compare Edwards to Ted Kennedy at all.
First of all, it’s a different world than it was 40 years ago. In 1969 it wasn’t exactly scandalous for a powerful man to bang his secretary, as long as there was a thin sheen of plausible deniability. And driving drunk was not seen as the huge moral failing that it is today.
Also, Ted was part of America’s biggest political dynasty, and at that point the American people were willing to cut them some slack.
Even so, Kennedy’s career did take a considerable hit, since if it hadn’t been for Chappaquiddick he probably could have been President.
Edwards was already becoming a perennial also-ran. He doesn’t have a well of good will built up like Kennedy had. Crazy as it may seem, the things Edwards did–not the affair or even the knocking up, per se, but the denials and the aide cover-up–probably seem more unforgivable to us in 2010 than Kennedy’s actions (such as they were known) did in 1969.
Kennedy’s political survival was a fluke, an accident of history. Edwards is done.
It’s important to keep in mind that even though Game Change was written by ostensibly serious journalists, from all accounts it appears to be highly sensationalized. They may have the mood of the campaign and the personalities of the key players exactly right, but they’ve not really had an incentive to make it any less dramatic than it actually was.
But Edwards hasn’t done any of the things that allow Americans to forgive him and give him his public career back. He’d have to perform some semblance of an apology (Kennedy did, and flubbed it badly but managed to hang on) and the more groveling he could do, the better off he’d be. But he doesn’t seem to know how to do that, and it’s just as well, we’re better off without him.
IMO Dems should never allow him back in anything. What he pulled was a betrayal of the entire party. Yeah, he never had a chance at the nomination anyway, but if he had…I don’t see any reason for Dems to give him the time of day ever again.
But the point (made by you) didn’t relate to breaking the law - you were on about whether his lies were of valid public concern. I doubt you’ll want to argue that only lawbreaking warrants attention, so I’m puzzled to see the relevance of this statement.
(Really, Dio, your logic can be quite strange at times.)
BFD… who gives a flying fuck about him or her.
Here’s the real story which should be “debated”.
Of course Edwards’ career is over, good grief it was over months ago. He’s a sleazoid. Big Whoop. Not too many sleazoids huh?
I wonder what JE could have done if not taken down by his own petard. I wonder if we could have … oh hell, we’ll never have it. Oh, but if we could only have socialized medicine.
I absolutely would argue that only lawbreaking warrants attention in the case of a private citizen whose actions do not affect the public. Edwards holds no public office and was no longer a candidate for anything when this story broke (and I wouldn’t call an earlier blind gossip piece to be actual news reportage), so none of his private life was the public business, and he was justified in lying about it. Why the hell shouldn’t he have lied about it? He didn’t owe the public or the media vultures anything better.
You’re right, he doesn’t have any obligation to tell anyone the truth about his private life. He has broken no law.
But that doesn’t change that he cheated on his dying wife, lied about it, then denied, quite vehemently, the paternity of his own child.
That’s a hard position to recover from if you’re seeking public office. I think people could overlook the cheating, even on a sick and dying wife, with time. I think people would be willing to forgive him lying about same, with time. But I doubt people are willing to forget him so vehemently denying the paternity of a child he knew full well was his. He denied it repeated and vehemently and on tape. That’s hard to live down.
Vitter’s career is not over. Or do Repubs get more slack?
Craig got caught doing gay things in an airport lav. Career not over.
Larry Craig’s political career is over - he no longer is a senator.
For politics his career is over, for being a lawyer or businessman, no one will really care
Does this really elude you? The concept is quite simple. One of the criteria a lot of people look for in politicians is trustworthiness. This is as it should be, as we elect them to represent us and look after our best interests. We are granting them power over us, so we’ve got to trust them not to screw us over.
The reason he shouldn’t have lied is simple: it was quite obvious he was going to get caught. (Heck, he pretty much was already). Those people who would vote for him because they thought he was trustworthy would realize that he can’t even be honest about something that was pretty much proven. This decreases the amount of trust they have in him.
And just in case you bring up the old canard “But lying in one area doesn’t mean you’ll lie in another”: You’d be right. But it does indicate that you don’t have a strong moral compulsion not to lie. And it stands to reason that someone without that moral foundation would resort to lying.
I honestly think the reason that the reason a lot of people don’t care is because politicians are just such well-known liars, anyway. I think most people follow the common maxim “If I can’t trust you in the small things, why should I trust you in the bigger ones?”
He did not get hounded out. He sat out his term and retired.