A few brief words on the John Edwards affair: I'm not upset with the former Senator because he had the affair. He's a man, and as un-PC as it sounds the fact of the matter is that it's not part of a man's DNA to be monogomous. Many try and succeed, many try and don't succeed, many just don't try. Whatever the case with Edwards, the affair and its effect on the Edwards family is a private matter between him and his wife.
My anger comes from a different angle - I simply can't believe the gall this man had, knowing the high level of risk involved, in making the decision to run for president with this affair practically still going on when he announced his nomination in late 2006. Although I never really thought his candidacy would go anywhere, the pundits and the polls had the 2004 vice-presidential nominee ranking in the top 3 throughout the early parts of the 2008 campaign. Had Obama not caught fire, Edwards would have been Hillary Clinton's chief rival. And looking at the piss-poor campaign she ran, Sen. Edwards could easily have won enough primaries to make him the party's presumptive nominee.
And if that's where we were today, I shudder to think of the turn the Democratic convention would take at the end of the month, not to mention the landslide win Grandpa McCain would get in November.
John Edwards was an absolutely reckless idiot for even thinking it was ok to run for president in this day and age with that sort of infidelity in his very recent past. If Barack Obama promised him a cabinet post in exchange for an endorsement, he'd do well to inform the former Senator that he can no longer offer him the job.
