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Not everything, but enough:
Edwards’ affair -- a tragic and shameful thing, with a reprehensible overlay of hush money and public and private lies -- is being understood not as a sad transgression, but as proof. Proof of something much larger. Proof of what the press corps suspected all along: That Edwards' politics were not genuine. That he is a self-aggrandizing phony. It is, apparently, of a piece with his expensive haircut and garishly sprawling mansion. His "phoniness" and his "love" of money. How infidelity fits into the (confusing) claim that there’s something hypocritical, rather than admirable, about a rich politician attempting to raise taxes on himself and his class in order to better fund social services for the poor isn’t quite clear, but never mind that. There’s another truth on display here, one that has little to do with Rielle Hunter: The political establishment really, really hates John Edwards.
snip
Two years ago, I wrote a profile of Edwards for this magazine that focused on his populism. I interviewed Chuck Todd, then editor-in-chief of National Journal’s Hotline (Todd has since ascended to political director for MSNBC). Towards the end of the interview, Todd digressed into something that had been puzzling him about the establishment’s reaction to Edwards candidacy. “For some reason he’s pissed off half of DC,” said Todd. “I can’t tell you why, I don’t know. There’s no one rational reason, but there’s a not insignificant clique of elites in DC who are not Edwards fans, and who are borderline irrational about it.”
snip
That is because there’s no ache to tarnish McCain’s sainthood. No desire to construct a narrative incorporating the Keating Five and personal infidelity and dizzying ideological shifts keyed to political ambitions into some sort of incoherent whole that wrecks McCain’s reputation. With Edwards, by contrast, there is. In 2004, running as a cautious and quiet centrist, he was a darling of the establishment. But his populist reinvention enraged them. Unlike McCain’s transformation from an unpredictable renegade who almost joined the Democrats in 2002 to a doctrinaire conservative who out-Reaganed the competition in 2008, Edwards’ drift to the left cast immediate doubt on his basic integrity. From there, it was almost a competition to decisively prove his essential phoniness: His $400 haircut was somehow far more damning than McCain’s $500 loafers. His willingness to raise taxes on his lavish lifestyle showed hypocrisy, while McCain’s eagerness to cut his own taxes by about $370,000 hasn’t detracted from his “country first” posturing. Edwards’ apologetic admission of an affair now discredits his politics, even as McCain’s leverages apologetic references to his own affairs in order to burnish his reputation as a somber straight-talker willing to accept responsibility for his actions.
This whole Edwards thing has struck me as very strange. He hasn't been running for president for a while now, he's not s sitting senator, he wasn't on the VP short list. Why the hell was it so important to "destroy" him?
There are some explanations in this article. It strikes me as almost like a Gore or Kerry thing; the media didn't like either of them and was bound and determined to bring them down anyway possible.
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