Timothy Egan has another excellent essay, “The Grifter’s Tale”, up at his NYT blog:
Judson Phillips is a Tennessee lawyer, specializing in personal injury lawsuits, drunk-driving cases and men who get into trouble beating their wives. It was his idea to incorporate Tea Party Nation as a money-making venture and charge $349 to hear Sarah Palin talk about what’s wrong with America over steak and lobster this weekend in Nashville.
__
Andrew Young is a North Carolina lawyer, specializing in John Edwards. The deceptions. The baby born to the mistress. It was his job to make sure the Diet Sprite never ran low. And when Edwards suggested that Young co-habitate with the senator’s mistress, to further an outrageous lie, Young set up the guest room and explained to his family that they now had new members.
__
If there’s money to be made hitching your wagon to a politician trading in populism, well, who can fault these fine men for seizing the opportunity. They must know, the check is more reliable than the politician…
I was an Edwards suppporter in the 2008 primaries, and I still think it’s a sign of our national political immaturity that his crappy personal behavior is somehow considered to have invalidated his “Two Americas” proposals. But I have to admit that Egan has a good argument that Edwards and Palin are in some ways spiritual kin.
MelodyMaker
first post!
hey, that was a slashdot ref, not for FDL.
MelodyMaker
I’m confused.
MelodyMaker
love the 2 comments on the linked article.
MelodyMaker
and this thread is really taking off too. Hi Anne, if you’re still here.
MelodyMaker
https://balloon-juice.com/?p=34030&cpage=4#comment-1569379 from last thread.
Whoah. that was awesome. Guess you’re taking a breather or having someone get you a damn beer.
freelancer
@MelodyMaker:
Hey! I’m done lurking, at least until I fall asleep in like 15 minutes or so.
Hey, A. L.? I love your voice, and your contribution to BJ, but the 2-5 AM posts of “late night OT’s” is hampering what you have to say as well as make it so that what your voice carries gets glossed over by the actual morning threads.
You’re killing the nite owls here. I wish that you would please start posting your late night OT’s around 10pm-2am EST/CST. kthxbai.
I also want a pony, but that’s negligible. Just sayin’.
drillfork
I too was an early Edwards supporter. I appreciated that he at least talked about the human costs of our healthcare system when no one else bothered to do so.
Of course his infidelities shouldn’t matter as far as his politics go. But now I kinda think that, Edwards being full of shit in his personal life, he’s probably equally full of shit as a pol.
As lukewarm as I’ve been to Obama from the start, I guess I got snowed by flowery rhetoric as well…
gwangung
Yeah, kinda agree with freelancer…some good posts that get ignored by our usual gang of rowdies, low lifes and idiots (who are NOT retarded) because it’s “old” news….
No such thing as a timed released WP item?
MelodyMaker
yeah, I’m going to bed.
MelodyMaker
@gwangung:
sure there is. can be done. but I’m not here to complain.
unless I’m complaining about not going to bed because I’m typing some shit on someone’s web site. which I’m not.
Sly
They both kind of have that same wild-eyed sense of entitlement.
I honestly have no clue as to whether Palin wants to seek higher office or if she just wants to cash in on the spotlight, but I’m inclined toward the former just so she can prolong the latter. As soon as the 2012 GOP nomination is over and assuming she isn’t it, the gravy train will slow down massively. No show, no dough.
Edwards was reportedly cajoling the Obama campaign to be VP on the ticket while the story was bubbling, and when that fell apart he pushed for AG. This was, I believe, as the story was breaking. Not that he had a love child, but that he cheated on his wife while she was fighting cancer.
Pretty fuckin’ ballsy. Daschle was dropped because he didn’t report that he had been using a car service provided by Congress on his income tax statements. Geithner was nearly dropped because he fucked up with TurboTax.
Having your staffer ask your mistress to get an abortion would have gone over like fucking gangbusters on the Judiciary Committee
Warren Terra
What invalidated Edwards’s Two Americas was its opportunistic insincerity; after 2004 a DLC posterboy walked into a phone booth and emerged a firebreathing populist seeming to embody the left’s hopes.
Libertini
@drillfork:
I maxed out in donations for for Edwards…first time in my life I was ever able to to do. The combination of his charisma and his policies was irresistible to me. His Healthcare plan was detailed and if implemented would have had untold benefits to every American, not just those who would finally get access to the care they need. His “Two Americas” theme was sorely needed.
I’m not sure that his infidelities shouldn’t matter. I consider it a matter of character. This wasn’t just an affair or a one-time infidelity – it was an entire secret life, made possible, in part by very wealthy supporters, while he racked in donations from people like me who believed that his character matched his rhetoric and the intelligence of the policies he laid out.
Reading the truth now as it makes its way out makes me need to vomit. It also makes me sad for our country that the one person who was saying the things that needed to be said was a person who could not be trusted for a second.
Palin also makes me sick, for different reasons as well as the same one.
Warren Terra
(Clarifying my comment: I’ve no problem with the message of the Two Americas speech; quite the opposite. But I never believed for a minute that Edwards meant a word of it, and was sadly proven right.)
Libertini
@Warren Terra: And that’s what I don’t get. The policies he laid out were so progressive, yet the message was crafted in such a way that some who are tea partying now would have voted for him. Did he predict this coming tea party movement and think he could grab the populists along with the disenchanted left? I just don’t get WHY he would advocate for policies that were not popular in the beltway if that was not what he believed in. If he HAD become President, would he have sold us out and turned out to be the worst corporate shill ever? (I believe if he had gotten the nomination the details of this secret would be VERY deeply buried. Young’s story seems to support that Edwards would have done anything to keep it under wraps.)
The populist movement is ripe for a leader, to an even greater extent that it was during the 08 elections. Is there anyone who’s NOT a fake who could rise to that challenge?
mai naem
I sent a lot of money to Dean in 03/04 and when I learned how they’d blown that money, I decided in the future I would send a little money to several candidates. I sent a little money to Edwards. Hell, like an idiot, I sent some even when he was trying to clean up his debt. I didn’t like Edwards before 04 and I really thought he had sincerely changed after the 04 race. I actually bought into him saying that his trips about the country had brought about the two Americas message. I hope I never run across the scumball in the future because I would ream him a new one. I also think the gene to make a good politician is the same gene that makes guys(and gals) screw around.
Libertini
@mai naem:
I agree, at least to the extent that an enormous ego seems to be required among those who run for office and have any chance of getting elected. The kind of charisma that Palin and Edwards have (and Dean too, I might add) also feeds that ego.
I think the downside of that ego is that it MUST be fed, no matter what the cost. This makes that kind of person even more susceptible to outside temptations – affairs, bribery, and God knows what else. (Please God, keep it to yourself. I do NOT want to know.)
Combine that with an utterly inflated sense of being bullet-proof, and you get the hot mess that Palin IS and Edwards WAS.
Sui Generis
@Warren Terra:
eggsactly. I don’t know why few seem to even recognize this. Even after he showed phony on the trail as when he did his announcement in New Orleans, then stopped at people’s houses for photo ops. Quick ones, and out.
Did anyone notice that Edwards switched from saying he was fighting for poor people at first to claiming he was fighting for the middle class when he was hitting Iowa? Guess someone pointed out there weren’t many poor people in Iowa. (We are all middle class now. And every kid in Lake Woebegone is above average.)
Furthermore, his position papers were not that good if you know what to look for. He was big on mandates — look at what trouble that is causing now. Obama wanted no mandates saying if we get the costs down mandates may not be needed and we can always add them later.
Edwards didn’t have good ideas about improving quality and reducing costs. Believe it or not the two go together. And the Cost/quality problem is really more important, fiscally and humanely than the private insurance vs public insurance is. He just talked about cutting fees and hospital payments — and the insurance corps.
What he said about housing for low income was awful, too. He was for the Hope program which is basically privatizing public housing , except there is never enough low income housing built to house the ones you throw out of the public housing. Which is what they were doing in NO LA with some really nice public housing which all the residents loved.
During his years in the Senate, the only bills that Edwards got enacted were post offices naming. He got a patients bill of right passed through the Senate then dropped the ball.
Plus Cheney shredded him in their debate. Cheney. Against a slick talking trial lawyer? Shows someone who can’t think fast.
There was no there there. Never was.
Sui Generis
@Warren Terra:
eggsactly. I don’t know why few seem to even recognize this. Even after he showed phony on the trail as when he did his announcement in New Orleans, then stopped at people’s houses for photo ops. Quick ones, and out.
Did anyone notice that Edwards switched from saying he was fighting for poor people at first to claiming he was fighting for the middle class when he was hitting Iowa? Guess someone pointed out there weren’t many poor people in Iowa. (We are all middle class now. And every kid in Lake Woebegone is above average.)
Furthermore, his position papers were not that good if you know what to look for. He was big on mandates — look at what trouble that is causing now. Obama wanted no mandates saying if we get the costs down mandates may not be needed and we can always add them later.
Edwards didn’t have good ideas about improving quality and reducing costs. Believe it or not the two go together. And the Cost/quality problem is really more important, fiscally and humanely than the private insurance vs public insurance is. He just talked about cutting fees and hospital payments — and the insurance corps.
What he said about housing for low income was awful, too. He was for the Hope program which is basically privatizing public housing , except there is never enough low income housing built to house the ones you throw out of the public housing. Which is what they were doing in NO LA with some really nice public housing which all the residents loved.
During his years in the Senate, the only bills that Edwards got enacted were post offices naming. He got a patients bill of right passed through the Senate then dropped the ball.
Plus Cheney shredded him in their debate. Cheney. Against a slick talking trial lawyer? Shows someone who can’t think fast.
There was no there there. Never was.
Sui Generis
ooops, sorry for the double post. I don’t know how that happened. Half the time I can’t get anything to post. Maybe it felt sorry for me.
G’nite
kay
I never liked Edwards, and I’m going to go a little further.
I wasn’t alone. A lot of people saw through him. I live in a white, rural low-income county. I straw-polled the local Democrats early in the primary process and Edwards came in second to last.
I was really surprised. I was told over and over that Edwards was their champion, and the most electable.
Obama beat him handily. He barely beat Bill Richardson. He got killed.
WereBear
I always liked what Edwards said far more than him, somehow. Seems like he pushed the other candidates further to the left, for which I’m glad, but I doubt a grand scheme.
Scheming’s not his strong suit, or he’d have gotten away with it.
Napoleon
@Libertini:
Although I did not max out with Edwards I did contribute and for what it is worth I am convinced he pushed both Obama and Clinton to the left on healthcare and some other things. Isn’t the plan that is now stalled way better then what Kerry ran on? If if we get HCR in a double bank shot kind of way your contributions to Edwards helped.
southpaw
A biggish part of the reason Bill Richardson never took off as a serious presidential candidate–despite that resume–was that people in the know had heard he’s quite handsy with the ladies and he was considered too much of a liability on that account. Funny how these things work out sometimes.
Deborah
@Libertini:
Not an option. People rightly smelled a rat in the dedicated staffer taking the fall, especially when it emerged that the staffer and his wife and his children and “his” mistress and “his” lovechild were all living together in a house provided by a wealthy supporter. And that was with only the Enquirer following Edwards around while he snuck into hotels to meet the mistress and baby.
That Edwards would have gone to great lengths (even more money, even more aides) to try and keep it quiet I won’t argue with. But that he would succeed? No. This story would still have blown up on the same rough timeline.
arguingwithsignposts
Smudge with the mouse.
A Mom Anon
I guess I liked the Idea of a John Edwards,man of the people kind of guy more than the actual guy. I’m ashamed I didn’t catch on to the creepy side of him until the rumors started swirling around. I’m learning though,lol,I’m pretty much over trusting anyone invested in politics in general. Show me what you can do,then maybe I’ll donate time,money and my vote. Talk means jack shit.
Platonicspoof
@Sui Generis:
Don’t give up; a common blog narrative I was hearing was that he was too populist and therefore the MSM were holding him back.
Only possible WP mod trigger I can see in your comment may have been man – Phoenix dactylifera.
Some that I planted at Xmas time are just sprouting now.
kay
@southpaw:
I would actually agree with that. I watched Richardson moving through a college crowd in Iowa (on C-SPAN, I wasn’t there) and I got the same vibe.
kay
@A Mom Anon:
The people I would loosely refer to as “populists” here supported HRC. They knew her, they were comfortable with her, and they felt she was practical.
In my opinion (for what it’s worth) she might have won had she adopted that mantle earlier. I felt she was at her best when she eventually figured out who her supporters were, sometime after Super Tuesday.
I think she got bad advice, and I wasn’t a supporter.
DougJ
I usually like Egan but this is bullshit. There are plenty of non-populist leaders who screw around in crazy ways (Vitter, Ensign, Spitzer, Craig) and plenty of non-populist leaders who are whores financially (Tom Daschle, George Mitchell, Bill Tauzin, most people in Congress, everyone in my state legislature, etc.).
His two examples prove nothing. I expect more from Egan.
EconWatcher
Two of the last three Dem nominees for VP have been John Edwards and Joe Lieberman. Think about that for a second. Something’s seriously askew, either with our talent pool or our selection process.
That company sure makes old Joe Biden look pretty good, though, even with his recurrent gaffes and occasional shilling for credit-card loansharks. I’m pretty sure that he’s actually a decent guy–which is far more than you can say for the other two.
kay
@EconWatcher:
I voted for Gore despite Lieberman. I thought he was a horrible pick, and it made me question Gore’s judgment.
Still does.
arguingwithsignposts
I just tried to wade through a few of the comments in the previous thread, and … wow, the anti-vax threads look like a walk in the park. I need a kitteh chaser now.
Napoleon
@EconWatcher:
And Obama almost picked Bayh. After watching the Democratic Congress this last year, particularly the Senate, the quality of the senior Dems are abysmal. After the last year run through some of them in your head (in addition to Bayh) and try to tell me they not inept: Dodd, Reid, Baucus. They are the surrended first fight second crowd, a la Lieberman.
MacsenMifune
DougJ has got it right, this has more to do with how screwed up our political system is than anything to do with populism. Plus Palin is more a demagogue than a populist.
BR
I’m not sure why, but Edwards always seemed full of shit to me. There was something too slick about him that made it hard for me to believe what he was saying.
And I knew that the details in a candidate’s policy proposals don’t matter since congress will rip it up anyway, so what matters is the thought process used to arrive at those details. Edwards’ camp, for all its crowing about how it put forward the most progressive position, never explained why if Edwards cared so much about HCR he didn’t support single payer.
Napoleon
@BR:
Because it would not pass Congress in a million years. He sends single payor up the to the Hill it would be assigned a bill number then promptly filed in the round filing can at the end of the desk never to even be discussed let alone brought up for a vote.
BR
@Napoleon:
I agree with that. However, I don’t remember them really articulating their thinking in putting together their HCR plan, not to mention that it wouldn’t really matter what the details were.
mr. whipple
@BR:
“not to mention that it wouldn’t really matter what the details were.”
What?
jeffreyw
A true artist must always suffer the barbed comments of his critics with good grace and humor. History will redeem me.
zmulls
I think it’s entirely possible to be a hideous person in one’s private life and believe in high ideals at the same time. Just as there are probably a lot of people who espouse awful ideas who are probably salts of the earth off the stage.
(I *would* like to have a beer with George W. Bush…..bet he’d have some fun stories)
I think Edwards believed what he was fighting for, for whatever reason. Could be guilt at his own good fortune, could be a desire to identify with Robert Kennedy, I’m not going to psychoanalyze. I just don’t think his wretched private behavior negates what he was talking about or means he didn’t mean it.
(Having an affair: Weak but human. Fathering a child during the affair: Careless and reckless. Videotaping: Incredibly stupid. Buying off a staffer to be his beard: Unforgiveable).
Lyndon Johnson was probably the lowest snake to ever sit in the oval office (I’m waiting for Caro’s final volume), but he managed to get the Civil Rights Act and several other progressive pieces of legislation passed. He was a monster of a human being. It almost begs the question whether a certain amount of ruthlessness is necessary to pass idealistic goals.
Napoleon
@zmulls:
[COUGH]Thomas Jefferson[/COUGH]
Bob (Not B.o.B.)
@drillfork:
Bingo!
mr. whipple
@zmulls:
“Lyndon Johnson was probably the lowest snake to ever sit in the oval office (I’m waiting for Caro’s final volume)”
Why?
PTirebiter
@DougJ:
We seem to have very different takes on Egan’s post. To my eye, Egan wasn’t trying to prove anything, and he wasn’t making any particular point about Populism. He was simply drawing the parallels between two shameless Grifters, and their common Marks. The P.T. Barnum is strong with these two, and that is what makes them unique.
By the way, did you happen to read Egan’s, The Worst Hard Time? I thought it was stunning.
chopper
i watched the bit on edwards and young on the teevee a few nights ago. 20/20 i think. either way, edwards really is far more of a scumbag then i had thought (20/20 being a buncha hacks nonwithstanding).
policies or not, the sheer gall of the guy running for the dem nod while all this was not only going on, but destined to come out sooner rather than later, left a bad taste in my mouth. could you imagine if he had won the nomination?
Libertini
@Napoleon: I agree, and thanks for saying that. Makes me feel a little better.
EconWatcher
@zmulls:
Here’s the problem with saying that Edwards might still have been sincere about his alleged, newfound political ideals, despite his personal issues:
Edwards knew what happened with Clinton. He knew there would be enemies looking for any ammunition they could find to destroy him, his party, and his purported agenda of helping the poor. And he knew that the country was virtually on the edge of collapse, so that stable and effective leadership was going to be more important than probably at any time since World War II.
Knowing all of that, he aggessively sought the Democratic nomination, against two credible alternative candidates, with those skeletons so precariously hidden in his closet.
That’s not just selfish. It’s sociopathy.
EconWatcher
@chopper:
I see chopper kind of beat me to it.
PTirebiter
@Napoleon:
No sh#@t. Their apologetic performances in their respective campaigns should have been a red flag to all of us. In retrospect, it was obvious that the team they were playing for wasn’t actually a team.
Keith G
@EconWatcher:
Nailed it!
All politicians are self-interested. Most are good at being slippery when need be. The ones who are not get selected out (See Mondale ’84). That said, Edwards always seemed to have self-interest and slipperiness in excess. My family in the Carolinas, though liberal Dems, were not fond of him. Their BS detectors might be better than most.
DougJ
@zmulls:
Also this.
If John Edwards had been elected and gotten a decent health care reform package through, I’d be more than happy to forget about all his extramarital dalliances.
cmorenc
@kay
To be fair, it wasn’t nearly so obvious back in summer 2000, when Gore picked Lieberman, just what a nasty, untrustworthy, selfishly vain prick of a person Lieberman really was. Back then, Lieberman seemed personally charming and superficially, the paragon of personal discipline and integrity (see: his faithful observance of the strictest Orthodox Jewish ritual on Fridays). Circumstances simply hadn’t come along to stress and nakedly expose Lieberman’s negative character traits the way they have post-2000, and frankly events and circumstances since then have tended to feed and exacerbate these negative traits, rather than dampen them.
That’s not to say at all that Gore’s pick of Lieberman in 2000 was the best that he could have done. Like too many little things Gore did during the course of the 2000 campaign, the choice of Lieberman was a tactical judgment that simply didn’t pay off very well, especially compared to other shoulda-woulda choices he could have made. Lieberman was supposed to win enough of the Jewish vote in Florida, just like heavily democratic local officials (including election officials) were supposed to take care of insuring it was easy to go to the polls and design ballots that were easy for voters to mark correctly….
Napoleon
@mr. whipple:
He is a slime bag from front to back in the books. Lies about everything, cheats on his wife, is a physical coward, somehow ends up one of the richest men ever to occupy the Oval Office even though the never drew a salary other then a government salary and was born into a dirt poor family, etc. etc.
I recall sometime during the Ford or maybe the Carter admin. someone did a story where the press had been polled about who was the most dishonest Pres they had dealt with and Johnson beat Nixon, and that is with Nixon having been the memory that would have been freshest with the press.
The Other Steve
I still think it’s a sign of our national political immaturity that her crappy personal behavior is somehow considered to have invalidated Palin’s “Palling around with terrorists” proposals.
fixt
You could say the same for James O’Keefe as well. The list goes on.
The only excuses you are making is for your own political immaturity in falling for the con game.
dmsilev
@EconWatcher:
Compare and contrast: Dan Quayle, Jack Kemp, Dick Cheney, and Sarah Palin.
Of that set, the only one who isn’t (at best) a waste of oxygen is Kemp.
-dms
artem1s
I think its more akin the gene that make televangelists screw around. Steinbeck certainly could identify it and described it at great length in the Grapes of Wrath.
Anyway, I remember thinking in 2000 that the guy was ripe for an affair. As events have been revealed I have often wondered who wrote his speeches, especially the one he gave at the Center for American Progress in 2005 after Katrina.
http://radio-weblogs.com/0107946/stories/2005/09/19/edwardsSpeech91905.html
I read it before I watched a youtube of it. Have to say it “read” better than he “performed” it. Since then I’ve wondered if the writer was the ‘real’ mind behind the policies in that speech.
just a thought.
Keith G
@DougJ:
But how could he have? A) Such a feat is seemingly tough beyond reason. B) His past -maybe present, too- would have been hung around his neck like a flaming tire. C) Would he suddenly turned to the type of rational thinker that could get this Herculean task done? No, not likely.
We are lucky this seemingly sociopathic “Music Man” got weeded out.
Napoleon
@dmsilev:
I hate to defend Cheney but no one would have thought picking him was bad at the time. It is only with hindsight is it obvious what a disaster he was.
The Other Steve
@artem1s:
One has to remember Edwards was a trial lawyer. His job was to sell sympathy to juries and he was really very good at it.
It was all a scam, right from the start.
zmulls
I agree that Edwards behavior is sociopathy. That doesn’t mean he didn’t believe in the things he professed to believe in. (I’m not avowing that he *did* believe — I’m making the point that his abhorrent behavior does not mean he *didn’t*)
@mr. whipple
Why was he the lowest snake ever to sit in the Oval Office, or why am I anxiously waiting for Caro’s fourth volume?
I read the second and third. The second volume described in incredible detail what went down with Johnson’s “election” to the Senate. It’s much too late to go back and say the other guy won and remove Johnson retroactively from the Presidency (and nullify the Vietnam War). And the third, “Master of the Senate” is breathtaking in its scope. You’ll read about episodes large and small in which it is demonstrated that when it came to politics, Johnson didn’t care what he did, who he screwed, who he mowed down — as long as he got what he wanted. He doesn’t appear to have a personal scruple in his entire body. The fact that it took his single-minded energies to cajole and threaten and bulldoze to get civil rights legislation passed gives one pause.
My favorite story from the book is how he made his bones, as it were, by calling in a perfectly honorable civil servant in front of his subcommittee and methodically destroyed the man’s reputation and career, to get in good with his oil business buddies for political gain and personal profit.
He treated his wife and everyone around him like dogcrap and expected them to take it.
I have a grudging — very grudging — admiration for his work ethic. I can’t remember the name of the school, but early in his career, when an aide suggests something isn’t going to be possible, he turns and says “Are we going to join the can’t-do-it club right here on the steps of the [name forgotten] school?”
Read the book — then see if you think he was better than Richard Nixon, William McKinley or William Henry Harrison.
The Other Steve
@zmulls:
Of course. To be a really good actor, you have to really believe the lines you are delivering. You have to really believe that your son is dying of cancer, which is what allows you to give the memorable teary performance in the hospital.
That’s the secret to all the cons… It’s not a lie if you really really believe it’s true.
zmulls
Here’s the larger point I was trying to make.
The Right makes this error all the time — they say, “that is a good person, so he must believe in good things.” They confuse, say, Bush’s sobriety, belief in God, etc., with his policies. People on the right need to know whether a person is Good or Bad. There’s no in between, no nuance.
People are really complicated. (see Shakespeare and so on). Good and Evil co-exist in everyone. And finding evil in one corner does not mean there isn’t good in another.
Edwards probably would have imploded sooner or later, so good thing it was early enough. And he won’t have my support for any office anytime on the foreseeable horizon. But I dislike the instant conclusion that he must have been faking everything.
Sometimes liars tell the truth. And mean it. Just makes it harder to believe them.
aimai
Kay,
That’s really interesting, the people I knew as populists supported Edwards. I think there was a poll at some point which revealed, as well, that if you were really angry with the Bush administration and wanted someone who looked like they might actually look back in anger once they were in the White House you sort of leaned towards Edwards. You definitely didn’t lean towards Obama because he was always cautioning people against anger, and against looking back.
I can’t say I supported anyone, I don’t think I started giving money until I began donating to Obama once the primaries were over. I would have been fine with any of the three dems but I leaned towards Edwards’ stated programs and would have voted for him in the primary if he hadn’t dropped out.
Thirteen ways of looking at a candidate. There were so many different ways of looking at candidates that I don’t fault anyone for making a mistake with one, or the other. Some people liked Edwards’ proposals but not his affect and style. Others loved his style but not his proposals. Others were making their choice on “electability” which, as we all know, was like choosing what kind of car you thought your neighbor was going to buy. I didn’t, personally, think that any one of the candidates was more likely to carry out their campaign promises than another so I didn’t choose on that basis. I voted for Obama in the primary because I thought he could win the general, and I was pretty sure that Clinton wouldn’t just because of the immense backlog of hatred for her that the right wing had built up. I didn’t see any real difference between them as candidates or as political thinkers–they were both middle of the road, centrist, political people. Mandates or not mandates? this or that line item in their laundry list of to-dos? I figured that both would be intensely pragmatic and take what they could get. That isn’t what I wanted in a president. But its all that was on offer.
aimai
DougJ
@Keith G:
We are lucky this seemingly sociopathic “Music Man” got weeded out.
I’m not completely sure about this. What would have fucked him — and therefore us — would have been the news about his illegitimate baby. In that sense, obviously we’re lucky he got weeded out.
But as far as being a sociopath goes, replacing Obama with Edwards would have made our government 91% sociopaths instead of 90% sociopaths. Big deal. And part of me thinks it takes a sociopath to beat sociopaths.
Scott
I didn’t mind Edwards until he kneejerked Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan off his campaign staff. A dude who kowtowed that fast to the rightwing was no one who had any business running for a Democratic position.
mr. whipple
@zmulls:
I’ve read Master and came away with a different take. Sharp elbows, sure. But never felt like he was the worst.
If you look at the pics of him late in life, I think VN just took the life out of him, which tells me he did have a conscience.
geg6
@EconWatcher:
Agreed. I believe you’ve hit the nail on the head as to how I feel about Edwards. I must say I liked his rhetoric, but something kept me, an old fashioned liberal, from buying it. And now I know why. I don’t give a good goddam about what a bastard some Dem is in his/her personal life (with some exceptions, of course) as long as it isn’t something that will literally hijack the Dem/liberal agenda completely and that it’s a character trait that makes me know the pol is a fighter. LBJ was a prick in real life, but it wasn’t in a scandalous way that over shadowed his social agenda. It was in service, most of the time, of that agenda. Jefferson was a real piece of work in his real life, perhaps the most puzzling political figure in our history. But it never detracted from what he accomplished and still doesn’t IMHO. He was fatally flawed personally, but not evil, and was perhaps the most eloquent commentator on freedom and liberty who ever lived while being a slave owner and very much a my-way-or-the-highway kind of politician. Ben Franklin was an unabashed lover of luxury, excess, sensuality and a rabid Anglophile for most of his adult life. But his ability to create a unifying and proud picture of the typical American and what values that typical American had or should have and his great diplomatic stature before, during, and after the Revolution made him the prototypical, down to earth American prototype.
John Edwards never struck me as that sort of person and now I know exactly why. He has none of the strength of character that those men had and this affair and the risk he was willing to take with Dem chances at the presidency proves that. He had all of the JFK-esque risk taking bravado with little to none of the will, charm, or political mojo to make it all work.
zmulls
@mr. whipple
It’s a fair point. I couldn’t come away from the Leland Olds (looked up the name finally) portion of the book with anything but disgust. That felt a lot more the sharp elbows to me.
It’s easy to have a conscience in the abstract, and not in the specific. You can love mankind but hate people. The way the Republicans “support the troops” but won’t pay for armored tanks or bulletproof vests or veterans’ care.
I’m perfectly willing to believe that the human cost (“those brave men out there”) of the war kept Johnson up nights, and at the same time was willing to crush or spit on any individual who got in his way. So it comes down to how you’re defining conscience.
I also remember in the book descriptions of how he’d sit behind closed doors and rehearse phone conversations for hours, going over every possible objection, before making the actual call. Singleminded to the point of obsession.
dmsilev
@Napoleon:
The fact that he picked himself for the job (remember, he lead Bush’s “VP search committee”) was a bit of a tell.
-dms
chopper
@DougJ:
but not so much the damage such a flameout would cause.
@The Other Steve:
yes, method acting is big in politics. some of these guys even continue to act once the cameras are gone just to stay in character.
PanAmerican
Joe Trippi is a pox on the party.
I’d make due with a Bob Shrum or Mark Penn instead of ever using that idiot. Both Dean and Edwards got clobbered running his toxic garbage.
John was always a soulless pitchman, so I don’t hold any of his political pivots against him. For what he’s put Elizabeth through? Fuck him.
Chad N Freude
@PTirebiter:
I’ve read it, and I think “stunning” is an understatement. The most viscerally effective work of modern history I’ve ever read.
aimai
I agree with PTirebiter and Chad N. Freude, I’d die happy if I left a book as good as The Worst Hard Time behind as my legacy. If anyone here hasn’t ready it you really should. It is not only a stunning piece of writing and research, it is one of those books on politics and culture that reminds you that the past isn’t really ever past. What he describes, financially, socially, culturally, and ecologically isn’t something that is quaint, or long ago, or over. We are seeing the very same phenomena, over and over again, every day. I’m thinking of the nexus of bad financial/credit decisions that led to overfarming and ecological disaster, and then the struggle by government to figure out what to do about the dustbowl with limited resources and limited scientific knowledge about the problem.
aimai
PTirebiter
@aimai: I agree completely, every time someone even mentions Sen. Inhofe’s name, I’m again haunted by Egan’s book. That Amity Shlaes’ revisionist drek garnered so much press with barely a word about The Worst Hard Time, borders on tragedy.
Randy P
Wait a minute. I’ve seen this movie. It was a French comedy I saw on Air France once.
Ah yes, here it is: La Doublure aka The Valet (2006)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449851/
Thomas Beck
The sad thing is, Edwards was 100% correct in his call to break the power of the pro-business lobbies in Washington (power over both parties, by the way) before any real progressive agenda can be achieved. In a fictional thriller, he’d turn out to be the victim of a corporatist conspiracy to frame him as an adulterer in order to discredit his threat to the corporate power structure. The fact that he really is an adulterer without any help or hindrance of the lobbyists should not suffice to detract from the truth of his insight about the power of the lobbies; it has totally detracted from it (and distracted everyone from it, too), certainly due to the power of the corporations and the media outlets they own and control; but it shouldnt.
Bender
I still think it’s a sign of our national political immaturity that his crappy personal behavior is somehow considered to have invalidated his “Two Americas” proposals.
There is nothing more delusional and pathetic than someone who thinks a lying, cheating, deceptive scumbag was probably telling them the truth all along!