A Rock To Tie A String Around

I want to throw a fork at John Edwards.

Today, John Edwards admitted that he lied to Nightline and that Reille Hunter’s baby girl is, indeed, his daughter. And not only is she his daughter but that he also went to enormous lengths to try to cover up the incident back in February 2008 when the baby was born. Allegedly he relocated Hunter from North Carolina to Santa Barbara and rewarded her silence with a three million dollar home. On top of that, he actually faked the DNA results and talked a campaign staffer named Andrew Young into taking the fall for him and claiming paternity. Oh, and did I mention that all this was happening while Edwards was cheating on his cancer stricken wife?

Dog.

I bet another three million that we would never have heard this admission if Andrew Young wasn’t about to publish a tell-all memoir of his experiences on Edwards campaign. Oh, did I mention that the powers that be are investigating Edwards’s use of campaign funds for his 2008 election bid?

He was my horse early on in the 2008 election; he was my pick in the 2004 election. I was never crazy about John Kerry, but I was excited by the prospect of Edwards in office. So when the primaries started heating up back in 2008, I had my fingers crossed for Edwards even though backing him meant that it would be another white man in office. I still backed him.

I liked his health reform policies. I liked his proposal of regional health care markets. I liked that he wanted to do away with the Defense of Marriage Act and legalize marriage for all couples – be they gay or straight. I also liked that he wanted to withdraw from Iraq within ten months. I can’t say I really believe that it would have happened, or that his health care reform would have been met with any less animosity than Barack Obama’s reform attempts. But, I wanted to believe it.

But now, now…well, now I want to throw a fork at him, hard. I will never understand the urge that overcomes men in power, be they democrats or republicans, to compromise their integrity, destroy their family, and blow up their public image at a time when the entire country is staring at them and not only judging them, but also looking for cracks in their shiny veneer. I just don’t get it.

Is the urge for sex that strong? Seriously men, you have to help me out here – is that it? Or is it, as I suspect it might be, something else – a need to feel powerful, like you’re so much the shiz-nit that you can have any woman you want. You can skip all the niceties, the dating, the wooing, the compliments and the dinners and skip right to sex. Then, when it gets complicated, you can buy a three million dollar house in Santa Barbara (I’d say mansion, but knowing Santa Barbara – Hunter is probably living in a two bedroom bungalow with no yard, three million doesn’t go all that far…..) and ship your trophy and unfortunate offspring across the country.

My mother has a theory (to her it’s more like a doctrine) that when dealing with executive branch elections, we should only elect the old money rich. Her logic is that old money rich has nothing to prove, and isn’t going to be constantly trying to show off the size of his man bits to his staffers. She says that when we vote for rags to nouveau riche aka John Edwards, we’re voting for someone who is going to be by default in shock from the amount of power that they just inherited and thereby constantly trying to prove what a great, important man he is.

And before you say it…er…write it….there are 10,000 examples of Kennedy’s and Clintons to prove her wrong. This is what makes Christmas at my house really, really fun.

Nonetheless, it’s an interesting theory. Part of the reason I liked Edwards initially was his son of a coal miner, boy made good charm. But I suppose what I really have to admit to myself is that I like that quality in theory but when I think about the sheer amount of shit that the President of the United States has to take from the good ol’ boys club also known as the Senate, I want someone who doesn’t think he has to prove anything to anybody. I want a Kennedy, an Obama. I want someone who could stare down the Harvard Law Review and not blink. I don’t want folksy charm or uplifting anecdotes about Edward’s coat of many colors. I want balls.

I just hope that the victims of John Edwards downward spiral find some peace.