John Edwards, Total Jerk (Part II)

By Baxter

Fair warning: We cats are going to indulge in something a little tasteless right now. We're going to speculate on what-could-have-been if John Edwards had not totally screwed up his life.

It's tasteless because for once in our nine lives, we find ourselves agreeing with Glenn Greenwald over at Salon: Game Change, with its anonymous sourcing and gossipy tone, is barely worth the paper it's printed on. For that reason we don't really care to contribute to the media frenzy over it, but having read the lengthy excerpt at New York magazine's website, we can't help marveling at how incredibly stupid John Edwards is.

The book avers that after the 2004 election, Edwards' ambition morphed into megalomania (gee, that reminds us of another pretty face we know, on the Republican side). This made him pathetically susceptible to a clutch like Rielle Hunter, which led to — well, we're not going to repeat the story here. Suffice to say that whether or not you believe all the sad, salacious details in Game Change, John Edwards has utterly destroyed his political career.

And with apologies to Elizabeth Edwards, to whose suffering we don't need to add, we'd just like everyone to imagine for a moment how noble a figure John would be today, had he remained faithful to his wife while seeing her cancer through to its end. (For, as much as we don't like to think about it, Elizabeth's illness surely will conclude itself, and not favorably.)

Can you see how it could have been? Faithful widower John Edwards fiercely protecting his bereaved children from the hungry media, lending his name and energies to charities like the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, and — ultimately, tentatively, decorously — trying to find happiness with another partner again. He not only would have continued to look like a god (since, curse him, he never seems to age), he would have actually been one.

Instead — well, instead, we're left with an excruciating chapter in a scummy book. And his family's in agony. What a shame. What a waste.