I don't think that Elizabeth Edwards needed to tell the public about such a personal matter. I can understand if it were something that would have directly affected John Edwards' run for the Presidential nomination or the country as a whole, but it didn't and it wouldn't have. Yes, it was dishonest and it does say something about his character, but it's not something SHE should have to tell the public about. HE should have to - it was his mistake. I'm sure having to deal with an affair in private is painful enough. But having it plastered all over the media and being reminded of it every minute would have made it devastating - especially for someone who already is fighting a terrible battle with cancer.

As much as I disagree with John Edwards and his political stance, I still don't think Elizabeth should have to take any heat for his actions. She didn't ask to be cheated on.

Reply

I'd like to know what anyone thinks can be gained by attacking her.

She's ill, she's been betrayed, she's put up with more than any woman should ever be asked to. If she has any duty to the American public, it doesn't include taking the initiative to disclose intimate personal details.

Folks pretend they are all about "compassion" and "justice" but that is BS. Shame on anyone who says a word about this or posts a story about it.

That aside, doesn't it strike anyone as strange that people are feigning horror at one supposedly brief affair by John Edwards, when these same people declared that multiple affairs made no difference and were nobody's business when the guy was Bill Clinton?

Reply

It's disgusting what they re doing to her. Like being betrayed by ones husband isn't enough. She was supposed to share that with us. Like it's any of our business. My father had an affair and the pain that it caused my mother was tripled when she became aware that certain people had found out about it. Elizabeth Edwards owes no oneany sort of explanation. I'm hoping she is smart enough to know that.

Reply

I agree that it's complete BS. What self-respecting woman would want to plaster her marital issues across the entire world (which is where it's going anyhow)? She's dealing with enough with her personal health, and with this, why should people condemn her for not blabbing about it to the news? People probably WOULD condemn her even IF she did "tell it all". It doesn't make a bit of difference what someone in the public eye does, someone always finds fault and blow it up into headline news.

Reply

Shame on John Edwards for cheating on his wife. Shame on him for thinking he could keep a lid on it. But mostly, shame on whomever thinks Elizabeth Edwards should've disclosed his infidelity to anyone.

Thank goodness we know what we are dealing with before 2012. John needs to stay hope and take care of his family. We all need to pray that Elizabeth can fight the cancer long enough to finish raising those "precious" (to quote John Edwards when referring to Chelsea Clinton and her humiliation due to President Clinton's infidelity) children.

Reply

Well, I disagree. And this has nothing to do with beating up Elizabeth. I feel for her.

But he wanted to run for President of the United States. She should have insisted he didn't run. And I think there were some selfish motives there. If he had been the nominee, this most definately could have derailed his chances for the Presidency and he would have let down the entire party.

He should not have put himself in that position and she shouldn't have let him. She most definately should have told him he should not run, and if he chose to run anyway, she should have made it clear that she would reveal this damaging secret. The only other acceptable option (but one that would not have worked) was for HIM to openly admit it and then run anyway. That way , if people said it didn't matter, while he was running in the primary, then fine. They HAD to know this was going to come out. They couldn't possibly believe it could have stayed a secret. It never does.

And think of the chaos this would have caused if he was actually elected President. You think Monica Lewinsky was disrupted. There would DEFINATELY have been a paternity test and I believe he is the father.

Running for President is something that, if successful, should benefit the people you are representing. He betrayed all of those people.

Having said all of that, I'm not voting for his party anyway.

I 100% agree that this could have stayed PRIVATE, but not if you choose to take on a very public position that has people examining your character for months on end.

To me the fact that he cheated, then chose to cover it up, and then chose to run anyway, knowing that he'd be under intense scrutiny says a lot about him. HE was willing to subject her to all of this to satisfy his aspirations. It is consistent with some of his other choices in life, and I think his character most definately should be in question.

Reply

The Edwards matter can be a revelation of the glaring dysfunctionality of our political culture and news media, and a window on a way out of it to a politics of public interest and economic justice.

I write about this situation primarily from the viewpoint of a progressive political organizer. I am also one who is saddened, but neither horrified, scandalized, or disgusted, by John Edwards’ private acts.

(My parenting days have been over almost forty years. I still regret that I failed to build and keep a successful marriage. Fortunately, all the members of the former family have thrived since then.)

I supported John Edwards through the California primary, and gave his campaign $75 – funds well spent, for which seeking a refund would be absurd. I hope for his eventual restoration as a respectable public figure, so that he can use his talents for the good of our iniquitous society’s less-favored. I fervently hope that Elizabeth Edwards manages to dodge the cancer bullet for many years, and I trust that she will write more chapters in her inspiring life-story.

I assume John Edwards' explanation on August 8th that Elizabeth was very angry when he told her of his late 2006 affair with Rielle Hunter is an unnuanced but accurate summary. As is often the fact in cases of marital infidelity, a couple's bonds as life-partners and parents are frayed but not destroyed by emotional-sexual intimacy of either spouse with someone else. Mrs. Edwards has publicly stated she was hurt by her husband's affair, but has forgiven him.

Why did Elizabeth forgive John? I surmise that the joint decision in March 2007 to continue campaigning was part of John's restitution to Elizabeth for the affair. As the campaign unfolded in the ensuing ten months up until his suspension of it on 29Jan08, they both gave it a splendid shot. I cannot imagine that they did not realize John's candidacy was unlikely to succeed in gaining him the nomination, given the huge financial advantages of front-runners Clinton and Obama, and the media's refusal to give balanced coverage to Edwards.

The Edwards campaign did make two real contributions for which Democrats should – but may not -- honor them (somewhat paralleled by former Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy’s principled but necessarily corrosive 1968 challenge to President Lyndon Johnson, for which he was underappreciated for the rest of his life):

1. The Edwards campaign set forth strong progressive positions on health care, globalization, climate change, tax fairness, labor unions and unemployment, which effectively pressured the front-runners to respond with remarkably similar positions;

2. The Edwards campaign led most Edwards (and many Kucinich) supporters to compare the positions of the frontrunners; those comparisons helped as much as 80% of them to reach the reasonable conclusion that his style, issue-substance, and prospective constituency-coalition were more congenial to their aspirations than would a Clinton administration have been.

I believe the Edwardses decided to suspend the campaign seven months before the Denver convention because they realized that the chances of the National Enquirer's information gaining traction with the mainstream media would be much less. It was a rational gamble which did not have a downside for the Democratic Party's prospects for winning the election this year, I believe. Had the campaign continued, the chances of disclosure of the affair would have been appreciably greater. As it happened, the Enquirer had to go to extraordinary lengths – paying over a dozen reporters and photographers in a stakeout -- to get the story out before the convention. And its political significance, as well as its effect on Democratic Party prospects of success, are virtually zero. The Edwardses made the right decision: to take themselves out of the political limelight.

The political consequences of Edwards' affair are small:

1. Neither Edwards will be at the convention, although they may be at some future event, where their talents will constructively advance progressive political values, a reward far more important than public accolades (and be encouraged by the career of Ted Kennedy from 1972 to 2008).

2. As was the case with Clinton after the Lewinsky scandal, the overwhelming majority of the American public will be undistracted by it, and confirmed in their practice of deciding political matters without the "mind-forged manacles" (as William Blake put it) of superstitious, religion-sanctioned intolerance, especially fundamentalist prudery.

Don't be mad, be sad, (as Judith Martin wrote for her Washington Post “Miss Manners” column many years ago) about the unwarranted and painful publicity for the Edwardses.

Hope that our country can eventually rescue itself from the mind-forged manacles -- the long-standing and recurrent insanity -- of trust in the post-Lincoln/Abolitionist Republican Party.

Reply