I remember when John Edwards came onto the national scene. I wanted very much to like him. This would have been back in 2004 when he was running for president and then selected as John Kerry's running mate. Of course, as I did a bit of quick fact checking for this post I discovered his real name - Johnny Reid Edwards - somehow much more appropriate for this slick operator, don't you think?As I said, I wanted to like him - he is very good looking - has this kind of Bobby Sherman thing going. Remember him, Bobby Sherman? Here Come The Brides? Am I that old? Oh, never mind. However, I've always felt there was this shallow frat boy quality to his looks - a lights are on but nobody's home kind of quality behind the eyes - and I don't mean stupidity. I couldn't quite put a finger on what it was that was triggering that character alert alarm in my head.
A moment at the Democratic convention sealed it for me. This dude was not to be trusted. The moment was he was announced as the official running mate. I can't recall if his wife gave the speech or how it all occurred. The gyst of it was that John Kerry and his rich catsup queen wife Thereza were already on stage as was Mrs. Edwards.
He enters stage right - charming smile on high beams. Elizabeth Edwards approaches him, I'm assuming to give him a big hug. Apparently this wasn't part of the scripted moment. Without dropping a megawatt from his pearly white grin, he grabbed his wife by the shoulders without hugging or kissing her and shoved her out of the way as he passed so he could get to his mark.
The camera shot was of most of the stage and this little action occurred at the far left side of the screen with the podium and the Kerry's off to the right. I remember my jaw hit the floor. Did I just see him do that? The man was such a player he couldn't break from the staged moment and give his wife a spontaneous hug and kiss? I felt this cold pit open up in my gut for the briefest moment. What kind of man would do that?
Well, now we all know. The kind of man who would cheat on his cancer stricken wife and have a baby with another woman. The kind of man who thought he could get away with the affair. The kind of man who cons the woman and another campaign staffer to take the credit for the child. It just keeps getting better and better.
By any chance have your read the Stephen King novel The Dead Zone? The protagonist has this ability to see into the future when he touches people. He shakes hands with this political candidate and has all kinds of horrible premonitions about the man. He decides he has to take him out. Part of his premonitions involve seeing the man through a blue tigerstripe gauzy fabric and he cannot make out what that means.
As the novel procedes this politician is gaining in the polls and looks to be a shoe in in the election. The protagonist's last chance is a small New England church where he hides in the choir loft with a rifle to assassinate this man who he has come to believe is truly evil. The man has finished his speech and is working his way through the crowed doing the hand shake and kiss the baby thing. As the protagonist leaps up to shoot the man, he has just patted the head of a small baby who is wearing a blue tiger striped snowsuit. When the politician sees what is about to happen, he grabs the baby and uses him as a shield to run down the aisle.
The protagonist is fatally shot by the secret service men. I can't recall exactly how, but he manages to grab ahold of the nasty politician as he passes and now all he sees is the destroyed political career and he can die content that he has saved the country. Classic King.
R.I.P Political Career of Johnny Edwards - I think we dodged a bullet on that one.
5 comments:
Good call on Edwards. It seems that there are three kinds of intelligence that politicians can have, and very few excel at all three. The first is book smart - the Ivy League education and the East Cost background are part of this, although Obama certainly qualifies for this one. The second is shrewdness, for lack of a better term. Many politicians have much more shrewed smarts than book smarts. I'd put the likes of Reagan and Palin in this category. The third has to do with emotional intelligence, or depth, for lack of a better term. Edwards is the perfect example of a human who is completely deficient in that particular quality. No depth at all. It might take it a while to show up, but eventually it will. I also think that it's a quality that can be honed over time and offer Ted Kennedy as an example of that.
I remember reading The Dead Zone years ago, and the comparison fits well.
I have trouble seeing John Edwards as Greg Stillson---but I take your point.
(John Smith manages to grab Stillson's ankle as he's dying because Stillson comes to see who it was who tried to kill him and nudges Smith's body with his foot.)
That's a great book. I often wonder if King was aware of Bonhoeffer when he wrote it.
Re: Ted Kennedy - I remember reading somewhere a long time ago a theory about Chappaquiddick that made a lot of sense. According to this theory, Ted (in typical Kennedy fashion) was carrying on a liaison with another Senator's wife. Unbeknown to the two of them, Mary Jo K. had wandered off and fallen asleep in the back of Ted's car. The Senator's wife and Ted were up front. When the car went into the water, Ted rescued the wife and skirted her off to safety before returning to the scene to report the accident. It just makes a lot more sense to me that's all...
Doxy - I didn't really mean it as a literal comparison regarding the characters of the two men. The comparison is more regarding how one small action can suddenly reveal the true character behind the facade.
Further, like John Smith grabbing the ankle, that moment at the convention - I felt like I was the only one who ever noticed that maneuver of his with his wife...kind of like John's "vision" of Stillson.
I think I will need to get me a copy of that book and read it again now.
Well. Since we don't have the American ideas about 1st Amendment "liberties", we probably wouldn't write this.
It was different before 1945... But anyhow ;=)
I have to admit I almost fell for Edwards' Bobby Sherman ways. But there was something just "too" about him. "Too" as in "too something undefined that seems icky underneath." But I could not put my finger on it at the time.
What is interesting is I wish I had a $100 bill for every spouse who had an affair after the other spouse got a cancer diagnosis. It seems, both locally and nationally, there is something about our human sexual sense of self that when faced with the possibility of our intimate partner dying of a potentially terminal illness, a knee-jerk response is to go out and prove one's sexual viability, if only to prove we CAN be sexually viable--even if our best intention is to stick with our intimate partner to the end.
Cancer has put more people in divorce court than most people realize.
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