EOrlins wrote:

---

Ew to the picture.

Hows your support for John Edwards nowadays?

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11921221

Tail between his legs

Aug 14th 2008 | CHARLOTTE
From The Economist print edition

A disappointingly grubby coda to a political career

Not so pretty now

ON AUGUST 8th, as the Olympics ceremonies were being broadcast and Russian tanks were rolling into South Ossetia, John Edwards, a former presidential candidate, admitted to an affair. The other woman, Rielle Hunter, was a hippie from Florida who had worked on his campaign. In his (curious) defence, Mr Edwards said that he had never loved her. He added that the affair had ended before his wife, Elizabeth, was diagnosed with an incurable form of breast cancer. He would be happy to take a paternity test, he said, but was sure that the baby could not be his.

Mr Edwards, with his molasses accent and concern for America's underdogs, was once a rising star in the Democratic Party. As a bright young tort lawyer, he was elected to the Senate on his first try in 1998 and was picked to be John Kerry's running mate in 2004. Shortly before that election, his wife, Elizabeth, discovered she had cancer. After she had had treatment, Mr Edwards decided to run for president again. But the cancer metastasised and returned in 2007. The couple decided to carry on, and Mrs Edwards became her husband's most effective advocate on the trail. Part of her effectiveness was to cover up his affair, which she had known about since 2006.

Mr Edwards's confession came after months of speculation and two weeks of an internet circus. The National Enquirer, one of the less disreputable supermarket tabloids, reported last year that Mr Edwards had been carrying on with a campaign staffer. He dismissed the allegation. In December the tabloid said the woman was pregnant. Mr Edwards denied any involvement. On July 22nd the Enquirer came back with a report that Mr Edwards had met his mistress and their love child in a Beverly Hills hotel and that, when cornered, Mr Edwards hid in a lavatory. A few days later the paper produced a grainy "spy photo" of Mr Edwards holding a baby.

Under mounting scrutiny, Mr Edwards came clean, sort of. Questions remain, but the sordid details are ultimately inconsequential. Democrats are furious that Mr Edwards would run for president with such an explosive secret. They also say that Mrs Edwards should not have let him run. In fact, if Mr Edwards had been a top candidate, he would have been under too much scrutiny to clown around with a mistress on the campaign trail. He was willing to risk his party's prospects, but the Democrats were never in danger