The Edwards Chronology I

After penning two essays in the wake of John Edwards' August 8 "confession" of infidelity on ABC Nightline with Bob Woodruff, I decided I needed to think further about the events of John's and Elizabeth's life that led to this remarkable fall from grace for a man who had the ambition, drive, money and almost the support to become the next President of the United States. Now, after the confession, and some things that have come out subsequent to the confession, he is just a guy with marital problems, a wife with a terminal but treatable cancer diagnosis, two kids ten years of age or under (one older child) and a host of people that are now mad as hell at him. I write these two essays because I, a year older than John Edwards, think I understand something about ambition, early success, skill with words that electrifies people, legal practice, and the headiness of turning heads that ultimately became John Edwards' downfall. I also write about Edwards' tragedy because I know a thing or two about losing a lot when you think you might have everything going for you.

The Story in a Nutshell

After the death of his 16 year-old son, Lucius Wade, when his jeep was blown off the road in an April 4, 1996 accident, John Edwards achieved his largest tort recovery as a trial lawyer in 1997 and then, in 1998, decided to turn his attention to politics. He stunned many by defeating incumbent Republican Senator Lauch Fairchild in 1998, and began to serve as the Junior Senator from NC in January 1999. His political star continued rising, and he announced, in 2003, his candidacy for the 2004 Democratic nomination for President. John Kerry won the nomination, asked Edwards to be his running mate, but narrowly lost the election to George W. Bush. On Nov. 3, 2004, the day that Kerry conceded to Bush, Elizabeth Edwards announced she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. John returned to NC, was appointed director of a poverty center operating out of the law school at UNC, Chapel Hill, and continued his quest for national visibility.

During 2006 he met Rielle Hunter (details below), who was hired by his Presidential campaign beginning, July 1, 2006, for six months to film a number of "candid" videos of Edwards as he prepared for his next run for President. He announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic nomination in New Orleans on Dec. 28, 2006. Hunter's work officially ended with Edwards' campaign at the end of 2006.

Elizabeth Edwards announced on March 22, 2007 that her cancer returned, and that it was "treatable" but not "curable." I don't know if that is "med-speak" for "you have a few years to live..." In Oct. 2007, the National Inquirer wrote a story about an alleged affair between Edwards and one of his staffers, and in Dec. 2007 it followed up with pictures of a pregnant Rielle Hunter. She bore a child, a daughter, on February 27, 2008. Rumors continued to dog Edwards that he had something to do not only with Hunter but also with Hunter's child (even as Edwards' senior advisor Andrew Young took "credit" for the child shortly after the Inquirer December photos were released). Though Edwards "sightings" where Hunter was supposed to be have been reported from March and June 2008, it was an unexpected confrontation (see below) between Edwards and some National Inquirer reporters at the Beverly Hilton at about 2:00 a.m. on July 22, 2008 that led to his "confession" on August 8. In that confession he said he had a brief sexual relationship with Hunter in 2006, that he told his family bout it, that it ended in 2006, that he isn't the father of the child, that he didn't know of payments to Hunter to support her since that time, and that he has only loved one woman (his wife Elizabeth) in his life.

The Devil in the Details

Let's relive some of the details of the story, try to understand some of the psyche of the man and think about what it is like to be a talented man in your mid-50s who is still bitten by the ambition bug.

We don't have a precise date for Edwards' first meeting with Rielle Hunter, but it appeared to be at a bar in the Regency Hotel in New York City in late Winter 2006. I can find nothing about whether it was a chance meeting (it probably was) or why Edwards was in NYC. Hunter, a bit flaky but ever the opportunist, felt immediately attracted to this 'extraordinary' man, an "old soul," and they probably had sex that night. The realites of John's life were that he was a youngish-looking and handsome 52 year-old, with a cancer-striken wife four years his senior. His head had been turned by the fast living, travel and opportunties he had each day to meet and interact with energetic and attractive people. He certainly had come a long way from humble beginnings in SC.

Though I have never experienced life with a cancer-sufferer, those I have talked to say that it truly saps your strength, too, and you begin to be tempted to look for opportunities to reaffirm your own maleness (or femaleness) out in the world. That Edwards would have been vulnerable to this is, I think, clear. The next thing we know, Hunter is being recommended to Edwards' senior staffers by Hollywood producer Cary Woods in June 2006 as a possible asset to the campaign. We don't know if Edwards put Woods up to it, but the proposal that followed, as well as the videos that it consisted of, can most easily be explained as Edwards' desire to keep his new mistress around the campaign.

The proposal, which eventually cost the Edwards campaign $114,000 ($100,000 of which was cut to Hunter and her production company on July 6, 2006), would have Hunter, a film neophyte, make a series of "candid" or apparently unscripted videos of Edwards to show the "real life" of John Edwards as he traveled from place to place. This proposal, which was quickly adopted by the staffers, and which led to Hunter's incorporating her business with a colleague as a Delaware corporation early in July 2006, eventuated in four videos. They are hard to find online, but here is a copy of all four. Interesting to note is that they only are about 6 minutes each, except for the last one (prepared in preparation for John's appearence on Comedy Central in November 2006), which is just over 90 seconds in length.

The Videos

The dates of the four video productions were August 2, August 4, late September, and then November 14, 2006. The first, "Plane Truths" was of decent video quality, but the dialogue already indicated to me a problem and, on hindsight, a level of hypocrisy and narcissism that is even a bit striking for a politician. John is quoted as saing that he wanted the "country to see who I really am." Really? Obviously who he really was at that moment was a man in love with himself, trying to escape the rigors and "dullness" of family life when your wife has cancer, though in remission, and madly in "lust" with Hunter. Though no one ever saw anything inappropriate transpire between the two, one has the picture of a compliant woman feeding his huge ego by pitching him lines, humor, affirmation and, most of all, a continuous camera feed. What did he think he was doing? Well, I suppose that thinking was not really his strong suit in a time like this. The problem, however, with this type of behavior is that he had become a public official by this time, and he had to expect that someone, sometime would put two and two together... Oh, one other comment from the first video is rather arresting. He didn't want to be seen simply as a "Ken doll," which, now that I think of it, is probably the way that America, in large measure, did perceive him. And, the video did nothing to disabuse us of that notion.

Well, if the first video had some of these problems, the second and third, from my perspective, were disasters. The second was entitled "The Golden Rule," and it really is very thin on content (preparing for a speech where he will attack Wal Mart--a really hard target to attack...) and even worse on video quality. The shots show no techical skll at all; the combination of thin content and poor quality can only credibly be attributed to one thing--Edwards wants to keep Rielle on the payroll for something other than the quality of her video pieces.

The next essay continues my comments on his videos and brings the matter to today.

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