Sex & politics

Well, the news about John Edwards admitting to a months-long affair in 2006 while running for the Democratic nomination for President (but not while his wife was being treated for cancer, he says)—it got me thinking. As you knew it would.

For one thing, Edwards assured the public that he “didn’t love” Rielle Hunter, although of course she’s 1) eleven years younger than he & 2) 15 years younger than his wife, Elizabeth. So she’s got that trophy thing going for her.

Plus, she’s apparently not suffering from incurable breast cancer.

What gets me about that is he’s basically saying it’s somehow less selfish, arrogant & adulterous to carry on with a woman you don’t care about than one for whom you have feelings. How does that work?

(Also that defense in detail of “& I didn’t do it while Elizabeth was actively fighting the cancer”—who thinks that’s a justification?)

But that’s not the only thing that bothers me about this. What I really don’t get is this:

• For at least the last five years he’s been telling the world that he’s a straight arrow, the embodiment of Family Values & therefore worthy of We the People electing him to the office of Vice President, & then President


• He possesses the added saintly association of having his cancer-stricken wife publicly support his ambitions


• He’s been senator from North Carolina—Jesse Helms country—so has had to walk the straight & narrow path for at least the length of his political career


• He does have that wife & four children

He’s really not generally speaking a stupid man

So how is it he engaged in an adulterous affair with someone he didn’t love in an atmosphere where he was bound to be found out & publicly excoriated?

What is it about men & their sliding sense of morality when it comes to this sort of thing?

Let’s leave aside the ordinary schmo who believes he’s entitled by fiat of the Almighty to share his procreative fluids with anyone with the XX chromosome configuration. The one who thinks marriage vows only apply to his wife, but who either thinks he’s not got much to lose by spreading it around or can’t think that far ahead to any consequences.

The stakes may in fact be high for this guy—lose the wife, the kids, the house; but he’s not going to lose his career or his future in the community.

& forget about celebs who feel entitled by virtue of celebrityhood to sleep with anything animal, vegetable or mineral without consequences. They don’t live in the real world & we don’t really expect them to be capable of spelling “morals” much less have them. In fact, behaving like a Restoration earl sells movies & media, so everyone’s happy about it.

But what’s up with guys who have so much more riding on this than the little woman chucking his clothes, baseball card collection & bowling ball in the garbage? Pols know they’re expected to display the family values they purport to believe in. & they know that if they don’t live up their own hype, their careers are toast.

How is it that they risk not only the break up of their family, but public humiliation, alienation of the voters, and—most horrifying of all—the exodus of those big-ticket campaign donors. You really can lose your job & your career future by giving in to your libido (or your ego—or both). & there’ve been so many examples of that—Bill Clinton notwithstanding.

So what is it that makes a smart guy, who presumably loves his family, who is at the height of his career aspirations, who knows what the consequences are—what makes him put all that on the line to make it with a videographer?

I just do not get it.