The John Edwards Saga's New All-Time Record Low

2 years ago

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Mary C. Curtis

National Correspondent

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The ickiest detail in The New York Times story on John Edwards? Well, according to the paper, a book proposal by former Edwards aide Andrew Young says the onetime senator, onetime Democratic vice presidential candidate once promised Rielle Hunter they would marry on a New York City rooftop with the Dave Matthews Band making a special guest appearance. (While bands love publicity, I can imagine the DMB cringing at this particular association.)

If I knew my husband was making plans with a girlfriend for wedding No. 2 – after my death – he could cancel any festivities because he would surely be the first one to die; I would kill him!

I've criticized Elizabeth Edwards in the past for writing and touring and telling almost all in a book and on "Oprah." But hey, whatever it takes to get you through another day married to John Edwards. You want to open a furniture store in Chapel Hill? Why not? You're a wife, a mother and you're battling cancer with the albatross named John hanging around your neck.

I talked with John Edwards at a Charlotte, N.C., appearance shortly after the Kerry-Edwards ticket came up short in the 2004 presidential election. Elizabeth was undergoing treatment for cancer and he was worried and concerned. Yet even when a recurrence of her illness gave him an out – and who knew how much he really needed it? – in his quest to win the 2008 presidential nomination, he still didn't take it.

A successful politician has to believe he or she is the best person for the job. But John Edwards actually thought he could – with the help of complicit friends -- hide a truckload of secrets while pursuing the most public job in the world.

(Was he really trying to rig a paternity test?) Maybe now that everyone knows what pure ambition looks like, a minor-league hypocrite like South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford will stop insisting that God wants him to remain in office.

When adults act like idiots, it's the children who suffer. So, to Edwards' three surviving children with Elizabeth, add a 19-month-old girl who doesn't yet realize what the story is. Right now, she's the lucky one.

Filed Under: John Edwards, Scandal, Woman Up

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