John Edwards and His Infidelity

On one level the admission of former Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards to an affair with staffer/documentary film-maker Rielle Hunter is another sad iteration of the eternal, and probably unchangeable, story of an ambitious male connecting in a too-intimate way with an admiring woman who has worked a little too closely with him. We can debate forever whether the American or the female moral compass on this issue is good or bad, but I don't think it will change in my lifetime. Men will stray as they pursue their ambitions; wives will feel betrayed; stormy and explosive meetings will ensue; forgiveness will be forthcoming in many instances, and divorce (sometimes messy) will result in others. In some cases, a frosty truce will eventuate.

I am interested, however, in another "level" of the story--and that is the way that men (and perhaps women, to some degree) tend to fall in love with an image of themselves, and, as a result, lose their sense of who they really are. Like Narcissus in the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus, they/we become preoccupied with the "picture" of ourselves in the mirror or water, and so fall in love with it that we end up either pining away for the image of who we are or, in torment, figuratively plunge a knife in our breast because we cannot really possess that beautiful image of ourselves that we see. In all of this, we abandon the "little boy," to use John Edwards' words, who would never have betrayed family or put his wife in such a tremendously wrenching public bind, and adopt behavior that we, in our right mind, would find abhorrent.

The Allure of Our Image

So, the question always arises; why would he have done such a thing? On one level the question isn't answerable. People aren't led by the mind in these kinds of things; the focus of action has shifted a few feet below. But there are stories that men tell themselves when they engage in this activity, or there are stories/myths that prepare them/us for infidelity. In Edwards' case, it consisted of at least three things.

First, it involved a selective reading of his past. We/he tend to focus on those things from our past that reinforce an image of ourselves as kind, just, and good. As Edwards himself said in the interview with Bob Woodruff, he saw himself as "great, indispensable, virtuous." Why did he see himself this way? Because others had told him he was, and this fit in with his need to be so appreciated. He has, like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, "made something of himself." Along with the story of obstacle-conquest goes a certain commitment to one's self-righteousness and goodness, and, eventually, to one's entitlement to whatever one seeks. What makes this image-making so insidious, however, is that one of the features in the picture often being created is a sense of fallibility. That is, the really good guys not only have vision, determination, ability, and "telegenicity" (my word!), but they also recognize they are flawed. But, and here is the catch, they don't see themselves as that flawed. For all of their emphasis on connecting with and understanding "little" people, they still think of themselves as fundamentally different from the little people they want to serve. For, in the final analysis, they think they have "arrived"; they have fully shucked off the limitations of that life into which they were born. They have conquered that space and now are living victorious lives.

Thinking of the Self as Indispensable

This leads to the second problem that emerges when you fall in love with your image--you think of yourself as indispendable. You take a point that is true, that you are pretty vitally important to your family, and begin to stretch the concept of indispensability to see how far it will reach. You begin to see yourself as sort of indispensable for people outside of your family unit, outside of the circle of your friends. In short, you think that people believe in you and that their economic and psychic well-being depends on you. John Edwards won some large tort judgments for people; this no doubt contributed to his sense of indispensability. But this is all an image, a construct, a picture and story that the ambitious male tries to tell himself, and it is basically untrue. As I said in another essay, I don't believe there will be one person in the nation who will leap off a bridge to his death when he learns that John Edwards had an affair and lied about it. More likely people will say that it was a sad thing indeed, and that you can't really trust politicians, etc.

So, the effect of this little lie of indispensability, which people in love with their image tell themselves, is that we actually start to believe what people tell us about ourselves. But, as I have learned in life, people tell you things about yourself as much for their interests as for yours. Maybe even more for their interest. "You are great, John, and so will you support our cause for higher wages or better health benefits?" It isn't that blatant, or else the smart guy would see through it; but it comes down to that in the final analysis.

This isn't because people in general are bad or money-grubbing lackwits, even though some of them/us are. It is because all of us need as much help as we can get in order to make ends meet in life. We don't all live lives of quiet desperation, as Pascal said, but sometimes we are pretty close to that. If anyone can be conscripted to help us reach goals that we have set for ourselves, well, we might just about do anything, or say anything to get someone of influence on our side. This can be seen these days in the great interest in having one's own "celeb" promoting one's cause. If you have a good case, and a celeb, you are going to get air time.

Poor Judgment

The third result of falling in love with your own image is that it leads to poor judgment. Or, in other words, your vision becomes occluded or clouded. You just don't see things clearly anymore. A case in point in this instance is that after John Edwards confessed his "sin" to his wife and God, and said he received forgiveness, he kept up with aspects of the former behavior that continued to cloud his judgment. One of the most significant was his visiting Rielle in an LA hotel shortly after the birth of her child. There was a "third person" there and so it could in no way be called a "tryst"; perhaps the meeting had to do with "complications" that had arisen as a result of the affair (don't go public; whose responsibility is the baby?, etc.). But perhaps there was still a smidgeon of titillation left in the relationship.

In any case, to think that a person while still a Presidential candidate (or had he recently dropped out of his quest?) could with impunity and with no one discovering it, see the woman with whom he had the affair and expect no one to raise questions, is simply an example of clouded judgment. A similar example of such a stunning lack of judgment was in the case of Gary Hart, about 20 years ago.

Well, how can the situation be redeemed, if at all? The next essay addresses that issue.

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