John Edwards, former senator from North Carolina and son of a Seneca mill worker, announced - better yet was forced to announce - the details of an extra-marital affair he had with a campaign worker in 2006.
The story was one that captured headlines just as the world had its eyes on Beijing and the start of the Olympic Games.
Edwards' story is one that's all too common in politics today.
Several months ago, New York governor Eliot Spitzer, with his wife standing behind him, resigned after details emerged linking him with a Girls Gone Wild alum and current call girl. Former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey lost his job and his marriage after coming clean about the details of an affair with a man and making the announcement that he is gay.
Playing footsie with an undercover cop in a Minnesota airport bathroom landed Idaho senator Larry Craig in some serious political trouble, and let's not forget about the husband of the runner-up in the 2008 Democratic Presidential primary or 1988 candidate Gary Hart.
But should we as citizens, taxpayers and constituents care what goes on in the bedrooms of public figures, especially political figures?
The moralists' answer to that question would go something like this, “we can't possibly have someone leading our country that would do something as morally bankrupt as cheat on his/her spouse.”
What Edwards, and so many others before him have done is something that many, if not most Americans would view as unconscionable. In Edwards' case, the fact that his wife was just recently in remission from cancer makes the story just a little more sleazy. But morality is up to the individual and no one has the right to tell anyone how to think, talk or act as long as it is in step with the law.
For most people, being unfaithful is something that would require an immediate call to a lawyer, while for others, it's a normal weekend. So many marriages end in this country, often with claims of infidelity, that holding people to a strict moral code can be an improbable proposition.
Cheating on a spouse should not automatically exclude someone from holding a public office, but it does have to bring into question the person's decision making.
If a person with a public persona makes, not just one, but hundreds of decisions that lead into a position where a career, a good reputation and a family could all come apart shows a lack of impulse control and decision-making skill.
For example, Edwards made the decision to get on a plane to California to see Rielle Hunter. He decided to take a car to the hotel. He decided to get out of the car, walk into the hotel, go to the elevator, push the button, get in, walk down the hall, knock on the door, etc.
At any time, he could have made one different decision, and the lone focus of the world would be on Beijing, and Edwards would be busy preparing his speech for the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
In Edwards' release to the media concerning the affair, he wrote that he had become “increasingly narcissistic” as a way to explain his indiscretion.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV R) as “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and a lack of empathy.”
A person suffering from NPD is said to have five of the following: a grandiose sense of self-importance, is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited power or success, believes that he or she is special and unique, requires excessive admiration, has a sense of entitlement, is interpersonally exploitative, lacks empathy, is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her and shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.
All these characteristics kind of sound like a stereotypical big-time politician. Maybe Edwards, a former big-time trial lawyer, should consider the mental illness defense to his affair. Heck, it might would even land him a little sympathy.
Post a Comment
