John Edwards and the Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants

How many male politicians do you think are burning their little black books and expunging e-mails today, as another of their brotherhood bites the dust from his own lack of zipper control?

We have way too much information about John Edwards and his self-described narcissism. Clearly, like any good lawyer, John Edwards can look us straight in the eye and lie like a rug, as he did initially about his affair with Rielle Hunter.

But then sex, lies, and politics go together like peanut butter, jelly, and bread in America.  And sex scandals are the one aspect of government that consistently works across geography and party lines. After all John McCain has admitted to affairs himself. There’s no partisanship in bed, except for short-lived tactics where the sway of sex can be used to bring one’s opponent down.

Georgia’s former Republican Representative Newt Gingrich jumped onto Bill Clinton’s fling with intern Monica Lewinsky and nearly brought down the Arkansas Democrat’s presidency. Then Newt’s House leadership position was checkmated by dint of his own peccadilloes.  Idaho Congressman Larry Craig, who timidly toe-tapped men across toilet stalls, is a conservative Republican; former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who brazenly procured women across state lines, is a liberal Democrat.

The question is why these scenarios keep repeating themselves. And the answer, like Gaul, divides into three parts.

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First off, we should ask why these guys seem to believe everyone else is vulnerable to the consequences of their behavior but they themselves are going to get away with—whatever it is they need to get away with. Like the time Spitzer turned to me during a dinner party discussion about some other politico’s misbehavior and said with his trademark certainty, “I’m just a boring, dorky, Harvard-educated New York lawyer.  Some scandal would make me seem more interesting.”

Well, Eliot sure got his wish; not just the state but the entire nation was fascinated by his subsequent public humiliation. Running for political office takes a great deal of courage and a strong ego. Mix those with testosterone and the thrill of the risk, and it’s not surprising that many men begin to believe they are invincible. And like a baby who thinks no one can see him when he has a blanket over his head, politicians are hiding in plain sight in this era of easy Internet research and YouTube.

But because there is so much shame and secrecy surrounding sex in the U.S., there is also a great deal of denial. So the second part is that American politics are particularly susceptible to being thrown into chaos by the sexual maladventures of our leaders. The more underground sex is pushed, the more surely people will resort to lies after they succumb to what is probably an elevated likelihood that they will taste the forbidden fruit.  Meanwhile, Americans still don’t have universal health care, and the economy is in the tank while all political energy is spent on someone’s personal dalliance.

We seem to judge especially sharply the hypocrisy of politicians’ lying about sex. That’s the third part of the puzzle. Except for religious fundamentalists who are just generally obsessed with other people’s sex lives, most voters are actually bothered much more by the lies than by the sexual behavior of our leaders, and for good reason. These men (remember, we still haven’t had a woman president and only 16% of Congress and state governors are women) are making important decisions that affect our lives and livelihoods, after all.  We need to be able to feel some level of trust in their judgment.

But are we using the correct measure? Europeans scratch their heads in wonder that we care who our president is having sex with: remember French President Francois Mitterand’s mistress at his funeral along with his wife? Many other cultures have figured out that public figures are far less vulnerable to being derailed from the critical issues facing society when their sex lives can’t be used as ammunition for coercion or impeachment.

Ever since The Scarlet Letter, Americans have demonstrated a difficult relationship with sex. We’re terribly conflicted. Sex is used to sell everything from toothpaste to cars here. Popular music and culture are saturated with sex and sexual images. 800,000,000 (yes, that’s pretty close to a billion) pornographic videos are rented every year. Yet try and get honest, straightforward sexual health information to our young people and see how quickly it gets squashed.

So if we are to learn from yet one more episode of a politician’s traveling pants, the lesson is not that all men are cads or that you can’t trust any politicians. Both might be partly accurate, but that doesn’t mean the same flawed humans can’t simultaneously accomplish good things.  Occasionally even great things. Famous philanderers like John F. Kennedy took us to the moon, and Lyndon Johnson got the Civil Rights Act passed.

The more useful lesson to take from John Edwards and his brotherhood is that as a nation we need to get over ourselves and learn to deal with sex straightforwardly. That might bring us less titillating news on the morning shows, but at least we’d be able to keep our attention on solving problems that really matter.

Update 8/12/08 This article, “Wolfson: Edwards Cover-Up Cost Clinton the Nomination” is speculative but intriguing. We’ll never know whether earlier breaking of the news would have changed the course of history.

8 Comments

  1. Rose on August 11, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    I think we all get what we deserve. Elizabeth Edwards knew about her husband’s affairs back in 2006. If she’d told John the fact that the affair would come out sometime (as Rielle Hunter had told many people plus she was pregnant later), then the 1/3 of Iowa voters who were duped by John Edwards would have helped put Hillary on top. Elizabeth Edwards drank the koolaid (like Hillary Clinton did when Bill dated Jennifer Flowers as governor for 12 years!) and refused to call her husband on his infidelities. Now, Elizabeth is stuck in the lies of John and all the after-effects. Elizabeth’s power-drunk quest for power with John left out the later feelings of three innocent victims who will forever be scarred by this enabled betrayal: the Edwards’ young chidren. God help Elizabeth’s soul!

    • Gloria Feldt on August 11, 2008 at 9:28 pm

      Whew, Rose, this is a very powerful post. I don’t know that we ever know what goes on inside a relationship–what tradeoffs are made. My heart ached for Elizabeth and the children though when I heard about it.

      Your point about the consequences for Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is extremely important. Timing, as they say, is the key to life. I feel a personal sense of enormous unfairness about the whole thing, and yet the primary process doesn’t allow for any redos. Any ideas as to what’s next?

  2. Alx Utterman on August 12, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    hi, Gloria — it’s a great question, and I’m sure many people are starting to wonder why political and other public figures seem so susceptible to this behavior.

    a lot of surface explanations may exist, but I’d offer something less immediately tangible and more from an energy perspective.

    from my own experience, I would offer that it’s a lack of something called ‘de-charging’ — whenever a speaker, performer (musicians, actors, athletes, etc), lecturer, or anyone involved in standing up in front of large gatherings of people, often, is actually in front of a crowd doing their thing, the person who’s the focus of attention is receiving a lot of energy from the audience.

    whatever the audience members are thinking, feeling, however they’re reacting to the center of attention, ALL of that energy — both well-wishing and maybe more negative like jealousy, or stress releasing — is coming to the performer/lecturer.

    at the end of the appearance, the folks onstage tend to feel super-amped up, hyper, buzzing with energy and enthusiasm, or completed and utterly drained. speaking as a performer myself, I can say there’s really no in-between, esp if the audience is comprised of thousands of people.

    what this means is the person who’s the focal point needs to de-charge that energy effectively (there are some simple techniques that really work). alas, what usually happens (at least in the theatre and music worlds, as well as other realms of performing, like being a public figure, lecturer, politician) is that the folks who were on stage head for the bar, the sex, or the narcotics in order to try to balance the overload of energy they’ve received from the audience.

    it’s a LOT of energy inputs, being in front of a crowd — and doing it day in, day out, like in a live show with a long run, a concert tour, or a political campaign, it’s a constant energetic overload that is too much for the human system to take without some relief.

    in our society, we’ve largely forgotten that we are energy beings, like semi-permeable membranes, impacting and impacted by others who are similarly like semi-permeable membranes.

    as we’ve forgotten we’re energy beings, we don’t credit how energy flows back and forth, or what the effects of it are, really.

    but over and over and over again, we see the lives of performing artists, musicians, stage actors, politicians and other public figures — and usually there’s a noticeable lack of balance, over time, in their lives. sometimes this lack of balance manifests as physical illness, sometimes as emotional instability or depression, or in substance abuse (or addictive tendencies).

    I could give concrete examples of this phenomenon, and also easy fixes for it — but I’ve probably written way too much here already and don’t want to try your patience. *grinning*

    I’m just saying, there are more things in heaven and earth afoot than meet the eye — and this energy mechanism about a need to decharge excess energy effectively is one of them.

    thanks for listening — and for raising the question about WHY this seems to happen to politicians with alarming regularity…

  3. LN on August 13, 2008 at 9:29 pm

    Really interesting post and comments — and I find myself in a muddle about it all (in addition to being immensely disappointed. I will say one additional thing about Elizabeth — and maybe I am too Pollyanna — but I can imagine that there are actually personal reasons for wanting to stay together, beyond just the quest for power. I can step back and look at the situation and imagine that –

    On another note – in the litany listed above, let’s not forget Sen. David Vitter who opposes any sexual or reproductive health program — and condemns prostitution at opportune moments — all while seeking out those very services. That hypocrite makes my blood boil. The core issues of Americans being so betwixt and between and screwed up about sex is at the core. Wouldn’t it be great if we actually had policies that promoted a safe and satisfying sexual life!

    • Gloria Feldt on August 13, 2008 at 9:29 pm

      LN, we could have such along list of hypocrites if we started naming them all. But I especially like your last, hopeful, line about policies that promote a safe and satisfying sex life.

      And Alx–I am so intrigued by your thoughts about the power of energy flow from audiences. Having done a great deal of public speaking, I can attest to getting a great deal of energy from audiences whenever I speak without even being a rock star or a political candidate! It is heady and it does pump you up. Still, you have to decide what to do with all the energy that comes to you, no?

  4. shonda little on August 14, 2008 at 9:30 pm

    I’m pissed at John Edwards for jeopardizing the party’s success in the fall. I am not pissed at John Edwards, though, because he cheated on his wife. I’m sad for Elizabeth, but I think it is in between them.
    Rose, I think it is insane to be pissed at Elizabeth. Not only is it no one’s business whether he cheated on her or whether she forgave him, but she is also fighting a battle that will likely end her life.

    But to the post, which I thought was great, I bet you are right. I’m sure all the dirty dogs are out burning their black books.

  5. stacy on August 15, 2008 at 9:30 pm

    Great post, Gloria- you summed it up perfectly.

    As usual, it’s usually the cover-up that does more damage than the underlying crime or behavior itself.

    It’s amazing that Edwards would risk so much but then again, they all do- Clinton, Spitzer, etc. But why does McCain get a free pass when it comes to his alleged extra-marital liasons? Didn’t he marry Cindy like 5 minutes after he divorced his first wife?

    Politicians are like celebrities and they think the rules don’t apply to them.

    I agree that America’s 1950’s attitude about sex plays a big role in all of this and it simply isn’t healthy for millions of adults to be so uncomfortable with a completely natural part of life.

    By making sex taboo, I think it causes some people to turn to methods or behaviors that they otherwise might not- whether it be bath-houses or priests preaching the immorality of sex while secretly having affairs themselves. If people were able to openly discuss sexuality, there would be less confusion over sexual orientation, fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer incidences of transmittable diseases like Hep B, C and HIV. Our attitudes about sexuality are not only draconian and uninformed, but actually dangerous.

    Gay teenagers are still more likely than their heterosexual counterparts, to attempt suicide because of their feelings of guilt over the sexual preference- it’s not just a ‘social’ issue, it’s a ‘health’ issue- we want people to be as healthy as possible, both physically and psychologically.

    Unfortunately, I think organized religion still plays a big role in our negative attitudes as a whole- controlling people’s sexuality is a way of controlling their lives by promoting fear, guilt, uncertainty and a constant need for “forgiveness”of the type that organized religions hold themselves up as being the only ones capable of providing.

    And 8 years of Bush has made things much worse.

  6. Gloria Feldt on August 17, 2008 at 9:31 pm

    I was away enjoying the beach at Fire Island this weekend, so am a little delayed in replying to Shonda and Stacy.

    Shonda, I was thinking that the black book burning thing would be funny if it weren’t for the consequences to the rest of us. The hubris that let Edwards to continue his presidential quest knowing his vulnerability is breathtaking.

    And Stacy, thank you so much for your reminder about the impact on gay youth of our inability to deal with sexuality effectively. Young people in general suffer from the effects of unhealthy attitudes and denial of their sexuality; how much more difficult it is for gay young people to navigate their way through the teenage life passage.

    BTW, yes,, McCain was clearly involved with his current wife before he was divorced from the first. That’s not how they tell the tale, and somebody needs to do the kind of sleuthing about him that was done to Edwards.

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