Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John Edwards (ex-senator from NC, ex-Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, ex-Presidential candidate), has a new book out. Edwards, in case you’ve forgotten, suffered a terminal relapse of breast and bone cancer during her husband’s campaign.
Also, it turns out, during the time he was cheating on her with a “videographer” that he paid over $100,000 to. And had a kid with.
In her book, Resilience, she says that her husband should not have run, and that she tried to talk him into dropping out after he admitted to the affair. It also turns out that he was less than honest with her: he told her it had been a one-time dalliance, even while he had his mistress stashed away, and his staff scrambling desperately to cover up evidence of the affair.
So, for those of you playing at home, here’s the scorecard: second bout of cancer turns out to be terminal; husband cheating on her; husband lying about cheating on her; husband still delusional enough to think he can be President.
All in all, that’s pretty terrible, and I have a lot of sympathy for Ms. Edwards, who seems to have gotten the shortest of short ends of the stick. But what makes this story of interest to this blog is the backlash I saw today.
First, Michael Goodwin weighs in for the New York Daily News:
…the temptation is to shout, “Leave the poor woman alone.”
That’s easier said than done. After all, Elizabeth Edwards helped to perpetrate a fraud on voters, namely, that her husband was fit to be President.
She knew better and now says she told him to drop out because of the affair. He didn’t and she tried to get him elected, raising money and stumping with and for him. She excoriated the media for giving “the Cliffs Notes” of the truth about candidates.
If only we had known the truth she was hiding.
Ah. Way to empathize. Let me ponder, what, exactly her choices were once John refused to drop out. Leaving the campaign trail would have been–no doubt about it–a major distraction. The question would have been why, after not stopping campaigning despite being diagnosed with breast cancer, had she suddenly vanished. It would have been a staggering blow to an already staggering campaign. And, if as seems to be the case, she didn’t realize the extent of the affair, then maybe–maybe–she really did think he was qualified to be President. After all, many Democrats still think fondly of Bill Clinton, and he was a serial womanizer as well. (In fact, weren’t many of us wringing our hands about how a person’s personal life didn’t have to reflect on his ability to do the job at the time?)
Goodwin winds up with:
“Her illness has put a halo over her head and it doesn’t belong there,” another reader posted. “If she were not sick, there would be far more criticism of her for hiding this kind of news . . . By participating in his charade, Elizabeth is mighty guilty herself.”
Me? I second both emotions.
Which leads nicely into Maureen Dowd’s column in the Grey Lady:
But now Saint Elizabeth has dragged him back into the public square for a flogging on “Oprah” and in Time and at bookstores near you. The book is billed as helping people “facing life’s adversities” and offering an “inspirational meditation on the gifts we can find among life’s biggest challenges.”
But it’s just a gratuitous peek into their lives, and one that exposes her kids, by peddling more dregs about their personal family life in a book, and exposes the ex-girlfriend who’s now trying to raise the baby girl, a dead ringer for John Edwards, in South Orange, N.J.
So, to update your scorecard:
Bill Clinton, serial adulterer, perjurer, and not as liberal as you think–the greatest President since World War II, at least according to Al Franken.
John Edwards, serial adulterer, class hypocrite, not as liberal as you think but unable to even be Vice President: lying cad.
Elizabeth Edwards, cancer survivor, adultery survivor, cancer victim, way smarter than her husband: whiner who is needlessly exposing her family to ridicule for unknown reasons.
What I’m getting at is that this is a completely fake double-bind, and I call sexism. Bill Clinton wrote an enormous autobiography, which talks about his affair, but because he’s a Serious Politician (and Has A Penis), that’s statemanlike. Elizabeth Edwards, who, as Dowd says, “would have made a wonderful candidate herself. But she poured everything into John[…]” writes a book about the most wrenching time of her life, and she’s accused of dragging herself shamelessly back into the spotlight, not to mention her family, and O Won’t Somebody Think Of The Children, and after all, she doesn’t have a penis.
If she did, maybe she’d get more respect. Though if she did, her husband couldn’t have run for President.
Hell, he’d not even be her husband.
Except in Massachusetts, Vermont, Iowa, and (yay!) Maine, that is.