Unanswered Edwards Questions
Posed of course by Mickey Kaus.
The New York magazine excerpt also glosses over a key unknown part of the story--this part:
Out of view, the Edwards campaign was in damage-control mode, going into overdrive to dissuade the mainstream media from picking up the story, denouncing it as tabloid trash. Their efforts at containing the fallout were remarkably successful. The Enquirer’s exposé gained zero traction in the traditional press and almost none in the blogosphere.
Edwards’s relief was palpable, as was his gratitude to the small coterie of aides who had corralled the story.
What lies, if any, did Edwards' aides tell in their successful attempt to get the MSM to suppress the Hunter story in the days before the New Hampshire primary--and if there were lies, as I suspect there were, who told them? Were all the lies really told by John and Elizabeth themselves? Remember, Edwards is through in politics. Aides Jonathan Prince and Mudcat Saunders are not. What did they do and when did they do it? ... Or did the MSM just roll over and abdicate at the mere mention of St. Elizabeth's illness (or John Edwards' ... progressivism).
Nor was it only people in Edwards' employ who connived at what were by December 2007 fairly obviously untruths.
I've heard it said that Edwards was a third-tier candidate, a clear non-starter, nothing for anyone to worry about - had his campaign gone anywhere, then the Democratic truth-tellers would have stepped forward. Sure. Right. In December 2007 he seemed a reasonable bet as a vice presidential candidate certainly and - who knows - probably a more likely alternative than Obama if Hillary stumbled.
The problem was not again that Edwards was a bad husband. It was that he was a bad husband who had founded his campaign upon the cultivated lie that he was a good husband. And, as Mickey Kaus keeps reminding when others wish to forget, that lie was not constructed by Edwards working alone.