John Edwards Admits Affair

Richard Blair, All Spin Zone: Well, there goes this news cycle. The Republic of Georgia and Russia are at each other’s throats, and both have nukes. al-Sadr says he’ll disarm his militias if an Iraq withdrawal timeline is in place for the U.S. Serial adulterer John McCain said something today. Fannie Mae’s losses on bad mortgages are triple original estimates.

Yet this evening, the lead news story will be that former Dem presidential candidate John Edwards, after months and weeks of hounding by a celebrity obsessed media, has admitted to an extra-marital affair. He flatly denied the rumors that he fathered a child during the affair, but still.

A couple of emotions come to mind.

I’m sad about this, because I was and am a very firm believer in the issues on which John and Elizabeth Edwards have led, especially since his first run for the presidency in 2004. I’m further saddened because no doubt their voices will now become silent. They have more important things to attend to.

I’m disappointed - no, hopping damn mad - about this, because I’ve been a supporter since 2004. He’s received my very vocal support, as well as financial contributions. I don’t know how, in this day and age of Enquirization of every high profile person’s private life, that Edwards could expect his affair would remain private and secret. Let’s think for a moment. What if he had actually succeeded in his presidential run this year? Was this high octane trial lawyer so naive that he didn’t think that the bottom dwellers in the GOP would not have dug this up at some point, either before or after the Democratic convention? Jeebus. The collateral damage to Democratic Party candidates up and down the ticket would have been horrendous.

Most of all, I mourn for the causes that he so passionately supports, because those causes have now lost a significant voice (at least in the short term).

John Edwards and his family will survive this personal crisis, but we’re all poorer for the very public airing that his indiscretion will receive.

On the positive side, the other John (McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee) should probably be concerned about the increased scrutiny which his own personal past might now receive.

Update: A comment on Eschaton:

Am I to understand that Russia invaded a small neighbor today and yet the big story is that a democratic politician not currently holding office had an affair? Do I have it right that a book was released this week in which a Pulitzer prize winning author made the claim that the White House forged a document to help push us into war in Iraq and the big story is John Edwards? I’ll be over here banging my head against the wall. Don’t mind me.

Indeed.