Game Change and The Politician Give Play-by-Play of Edwards’ Implosion
• John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, New York: Harper, 2010, 448 pages, $27.99
• Andrew Young, The Politician: An Insider’s Account of John Edwards’ Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down, New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2010, 320 pages, $24.99
There I sat in Edenton Street United Methodist Church, one of downtown Raleigh’s oldest houses of worship, on a beautiful Sunday morning in early July. Little did I know who was about to slip into a nearby pew.
The year was 2004, and presidential politics dominated the headlines. Five days earlier, John Kerry had tapped a first-term senator from North Carolina as his running mate, calling John Edwards “a man who understands and defends the values of America.” Oh, and he has good hair, too.
I soon witnessed that perfectly coiffed mane in person. Edwards came in half-an-hour late, his wife, Elizabeth, and oldest daughter, Cate, in tow. And, of course, a hefty contingent of Secret Service personnel.
Edwards was poised, relaxed, confident. His family looked ideal. He was ready to become the next vice president of the United States. Who could have guessed the personal and professional death spiral that would follow after The National Enquirer exposed Edwards’ smarmy affair with Rielle Hunter, a middle-aged campaign videographer with a penchant for bizarre mysticism?
The culmination of Edwards’ slow motion train wreck, at least so far, came in the beginning months of 2010. In January, journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin published a 448-page account of the 2008 election, Game Change, that portrayed John as an egomaniac and Elizabeth a psycho chick. One month later, Edwards’ former top aide, Andrew Young, published his own exposé, The Politician. Any remaining scraps of Edwards’ decency went out the window.
Readers fascinated by the inner workings of campaigns and politicians’ cultic appeal will find the tomes a lively read. Their reliability is another question: Game Change uses anonymous sources, and a self-admitted imposter penned The Politician. Take them with a grain of salt, but still take them. They offer valuable insights into the anatomy of political scandal.
The salacious details aside, the most sickening part is how close Edwards, a moral deviant in the truest sense of the word, came to the vice presidency. That conclusion isn’t based on his sexual sins alone, as vile as they are, but on his hypocrisy. He claimed to be a champion of the poor but lived a life of luxury and treated others with disdain.
During the 2004 primary, Edwards would call Young at night and complain about rubbing elbows with the common folk. “He especially hated making appearances at state fairs, where ‘fat rednecks try to shove food down my face. I know I’m the people’s senator, but do I have to hang out with them?’” Young writes.
So much for Edwards’ signature spiel about the two Americas. Elsewhere, Young depicts his boss as a shallow, petty, and dishonest man. Edwards borrowed Youngs’ new Chevy Suburban and put a dent in the bumper the size of a dinner plate. “The senator never said a word to me about it,” Young writes. At another point, Edwards whined about not having a sport coat at a campaign rally to “make a show of peeling it off in front of the crowd.”
Elizabeth also had uppity instincts, which often spilled into rage and cruelty. As Heilemann and Halperin describe in Game Change, a wide disparity existed between her public image and the private reality. “What the world saw in Elizabeth: a valiant, determined, heroic everywoman. What the Edwards insiders saw: an abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending crazywoman.”
That rage only increased after learning of her husband’s affair. Even then, Edwards maintained a shocking degree of egoism. He told Hunter to get an abortion. She didn’t. Then he convinced Young to claim paternity of the baby girl, whom Hunter thought was the reincarnated spirit of a Buddhist monk.
It was a last ditch effort to save his presidential ambitions, or at least earn him a spot in Barack Obama’s administration. It flubbed in short order as Edwards first admitted the affair and then, two weeks before Young’s book came out, paternity.
No one in The Politician comes off clean, least of all Young. Edwards might be a two-timing slime ball, but his former aide is equally culpable. Young lied and put his family through the ringer, all for money. Then, when the cash dried up, he went to a publisher and laid out the scandal in print — hardly the actions of a white knight. There’s no moral compass, only greed and political expediency.
That’s the enduring lesson of the Edwardses saga. When Machiavellianism dominates, everyone becomes a buck passer. Young felt justified in falsely claiming paternity because Edwards was destined to save the country. Billionaire heiress Bunny “Money” Mellon felt justified bankrolling Edwards’ affair because he was the reincarnation of Robert Kennedy. Edwards felt justified cheating on his cancer-stricken wife because every powerful man is entitled to a little fun.
The law of sowing and reaping eventually caught up with him. When Edwards walked into that church in 2004, he was at the peak of his political game. Six years later, he’s a political pariah, faces potential jail time for funneling campaign donations to his mistress, and has ruined his family. He has no one but himself to blame.
Pity the nation that elects such men to office.