Quote of the Day (Francis Bacon, on the Hazards of Public Life)

“Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state; servants of fame; and servants of business. So as they have no freedom; neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire, to seek power and to lose liberty: or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self. The rising unto place is laborious; and by pains, men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base; and by indignities, men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing.”—Francis Bacon, “Of Great Place” (1609)

With dizzying foresight, philosopher/politician/essayist Francis Bacon (1561-1626) sensed not only his own catastrophic reversal of fortune (he’d be removed from office for accepting bribes from those appearing before his court), but also that of politicians all over the world, all the way to the present.

For all too many politicians, the mere chance to change the world isn’t enough. The opportunity to cash in on overstuffed and overpriced memoirs, hefty lecture fees, or service on boards of directors seems too far off. Always they can hear the heckles of the crowd. They wonder, “Why do they have to pick on me—someone who only wants good?” They want to feel the love.

Some candidates, like the Victorian Teddy Roosevelt, are perfectly content with mass adulation, though they make themselves unhappy trying to achieve it. Others want to feel the love in the most literal way. Count among the latter John Edwards.

The Nonpareil Narcissist

Most normal people, upon reading the rest of this post, might think Edwards wouldn’t like it. Nonsense. The one thing this nonpareil narcissist hates above all is beyond ignored. Even contempt is preferable by comparison.

And yet, aside from one or two oddballs who greeted his admission of paternity of his child with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter as a “bombshell,” just about everyone else is downplaying it. The other day, when I checked their Web sites, even his most prominent state newspapers were pushing the item pretty far down on their homepage.

Far-right conservatives believe that this is simply part of the liberal media conspiracy. I think the reasons are more basic: a) nobody believes him about anything anymore, and b) because of that, he is no longer a player in American politics.

Edwards is not, of course, the first Presidential candidate (or President, we know now, all too well) to have committed adultery, and most assuredly he won’t be the last. All the same, it’s worth spelling out how his offense differs from most, if not all, other examples of literal love in the political realm.

Unexalted Company: Tonya Harding and Joey Buttafucco

Edwards’ admission that he really did have a baby with Rielle Hunter is about the most anti-climactic news to come down the pike since Tonya Harding ‘fessed up before a judge that yup, she did know something about that low-life husband of hers whacking skating rival Nancy Kerrigan on the kneecaps, or maybe even since Joey Buttafucco scratched his woolly head and admitted that he and Long Island Lolita Amy Fisher were sharing a little more than pizza.

Not exactly exalted company for the erstwhile boy wonder of the North Carolina tort bar, the U.S. Senate, Vice-Presidential and Presidential candidate. But really, the same phenomenon held true, for all three people—the same absurd type of offense, the same indignant initial denial, the same mountain of evidence indicating to the contrary, the same admission reluctantly extracted only under the inexorable pressure of the law.

The news was first reported more than two years ago, but it took Edwards a little while to admit it. You know how Southerners are—they like to do things a little more slowly down there. Why, it might have taken him more than an hour before he made a pass at Hunter.

A New Political Hazard: Vengeful Former Aides

Poor Elizabeth Edwards has started to come in for her share of abuse, too, courtesy of disgruntled ex-staffers who blabbed to authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin in the just-published Game Change. If it’s any consolation to the beleaguered couple, they were in good company among Presidential power pairs—just about every twosome come out the worse for wear in that book except the Obamas.

Tell me, faithful reader, do you think it’s entirely coincidental that the winners emerged virtually unscratched from the sniping of aides? This anonymous carping is a hazard of public life that would have bewildered Bacon. It may well be, as Madame Cornuel observed, that no man is a hero to his valet, but the last several decades have proven this even more true of Presidential candidates and their staffers.

Contrary to her public “St. Elizabeth” image, the authors claim, Edwards’ wife would berate him in front of staffers for stupidity. There’s an implication that he was glad to be on the road, away from her, where he could be subject to all kinds of temptation, including the one to which he succumbed.

I’d like to put in a word in defense of Ms. Edwards. It’s not simply that there’s a nasty blame-the-victim note to the aides’ often-anonymous sniping, or that she deserves sympathy over the loss of a child or her own ongoing battle with cancer. It’s that what she was saying was true—her husband was demonstrably stupid. He proved it by risking his candidacy on a fling.

Beware FCFs

And not just a fling with anyone. The business card Rielle Hunter handed out on her first encounter didn’t feature the initials F.C.F. (First-Class Flake), but it came mighty close with its inscription: BEING IS FREE—RIELLE HUNTER—TRUTH SEEKER.

(Poor Diogenes—he used only a lantern to search for an honest man. Who knows how far he would have gone with a video camera, a blond mane and a flirtatious smile?)

Further warning signs: Introducing herself as a “witch” would make most people at least edge for the door. And not terribly much digging would have revealed that the lady’s real name was Lisa Druck and that, a generation before, Jay McInerney had based the silly, self-destructive party-girl protagonist of his novel Story of My Life on her.

You’re supposed to run away from women like this, just as you should steer clear of women who spell the name “Jennifer” with a “g” instead of a “j”, or of interns with the disconcerting habit of flashing their thongs at you on short acquaintance.

One Last Barrier to Political Adultery Left Standing

Yes, the template for surviving sex scandals was set by Bill Clinton in the 1992 Presidential race and his impeachment crisis a half dozen years later. Yet even “the Comeback Kid” might have been hard pressed to overcome the circumstances in which Edwards soon found himself.

I think it’s fair to say that Americans don’t take kindly to guys who cheat on wives with an incurable disease.

Edwards should have quit the Presidential race when he had the chance in late 2007. He could have cited the overwhelming difficulty he’d had in raising funds to challenge front-runner Hillary Clinton and the unexpected upstart Barack Obama.

Instead, he kept going, in the vain belief that he could win the Presidency—or, at least, walk away with another Vice-Presidential nod or an Attorney-General nomination. The press—very much including the National Enquirer—would have been much less likely to investigate someone who had retired to private life. He could have concentrated on repairing the damage to his marriage and family.

Instead, in his pursuit of power and folly, Edwards:

* Ensnared Elizabeth as much as himself in his disregard of reality;

* Induced aides to cover up for him;

* Persuaded one of these aides, longtime friend Andrew Young, to take the rap for him as the baby’s father;

* Even urged Young to “get a doctor to fake the DNA results”—even steal a diaper from the baby to confirm the results; and

* Would have led his party over a cliff if, by a twist of fate (say, a victory in the Iowa caucus), he’d been able to win the nomination or even establish himself as the clear runner-up. (Remember all the talk last year about how Obama was following a Lincolnesque “team of rivals” strategy in picking his Cabinet?)


Scandals and Their Relative Importance

The lies not only didn’t end with his withdrawal from the race, but didn’t end with his initial admission of adultery. In 2008, in an updating of Richard Nixon’s misleading “modified-limited-hangout route,” Edwards finally copped to the affair but not to being the daddy. It was only when more revelations confronted him—not to mention legal issues—that Edwards admitted everything.

You won’t get an argument here that many of the above details are rancid, and that the campaign aides who ran to Heilemann and Halperin with their gamy revelations are no great bargains themselves. (Only Edwards’ narcissism could eclipse that of campaign functionaries who go through life thinking that things could have worked out better for the leader to whom they had dedicated months of their lives if only their advice had been heeded.)

But you’re going to have a far tougher time complaining that there are bigger scandals, like the war.

Oh, yes, the war. The one that Edwards voted for and supported until it became politically inexpedient to do so.

Or the financial crisis created by fat cats.

Oh, yes, fat cats. Like the type of candidate who gets a $400 haircut, who invests substantially in subprime-mortgage lenders and an offshore hedge fund—making him roughly about as likely to go after them as George W. Bush would unleash the Justice Department on oil-company execs.

Edwards’ aides sound like they blabbed all night into tape recorders, but in a fundamental sense their feelings of aggrievement are understandable. The two largest domestic issues we face, both interrelated, are gross inequality and economic insecurity. They’re not only crucial to our lives here at home, but to the credibility of the American experiment abroad.

By virtue of his background growing up and his oratorical skills (extensive enough, James Carville has said, to rival those of Bill Clinton), Edwards had the chance to be a credible spokesman for those concerned about these issues. Unfortunately, his blatant hypocrisy—not merely in concealing a lunatic affair, but in wrapping himself up in the accouterments of power and the good life—sidelined him.

A jury now is considering whether Edwards used campaign funds to keep Rielle Hunter quiet. But, no matter what their ultimate judgment, his ignominy will be worse than simply a campaign infraction.

The media have trumpeted Edwards’ “love child,” but the phrase is a misnomer. It implies that real feelings were shared. Edwards’ great passion was not for his wife or his mistress. He had fallen for The Greatest Love of All: Himself.

The media have gone from cacophony to silence, leaving a loneliness—a confrontation with himself—that Edwards was unprepared for, a fall from grace that would even have astonished the shrewd but corrupt Francis Bacon himself.