OUCH—THAT HURTS!

By Edwin Cooney

The news last Friday that former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, the 2004 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee and two-time Presidential candidate, has admitted a sexual affair with film producer Rielle Hunter is deeply disheartening.

The fact that it reflects badly on the person of Senator Edwards is tragic enough. The sad reality, that the affair occurred at all with its public political and personal disgrace, has to be especially painful to Elizabeth Edwards. After all, Mrs. Edwards now has to struggle with marital betrayal as well as with cancer.

For most Americans, John Edward’s character flaw not only gets in the way of his personal and political legacy, but it also mars the political and social causes he represented.

There are, among us, issues-oriented people whose knowledge about everything from global warming to international relations is devoid, or nearly so, of the human element. For them, fact and figure analysis tells them all they need to know in order to decide how to think, react and vote.

For the rest of us, yours truly included, personal political influence is what feeds our outlook on the politics of domestic and international issues. Sometimes we’re influenced by our parents, sometimes by our fears, and often, very often, by our early bonding with men and women of national stature.

I’ve had a number of political heroes in my life. My first was Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

The late 1950s was a time of often dramatic tensions between the Soviet Union and the U.S. and those tensions very much frightened me. The Soviets beat us into space and their volatile leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was rattling rockets not only in space but even more dangerously in the divided city of Berlin.

To me, Vice President Nixon represented both courage and calm as he came face to face with Communism during the 1950s. In May 1958, he faced down a spitting, stone- throwing and potentially killing “Communist” mob in Caracas, Venezuela. In July 1959, he debated, with both eloquence and dignity, the “warlike vodka-swilling” Soviet leader in front of news cameras in an American “kitchen” at the American exhibition center of the World Exposition held in Moscow. When he returned home -- declaring at the airport that the best part about going abroad was coming home -- he was my hero. He would remain so from 1959 until the early 1970s.

During this time, although I came to admire other politicians, even Democrats, Richard Milhous Nixon was my “main man.” No matter how powerful the accusations with regard to his character or political history, I always made an excuse for him. I knew, of course, that no one, not even Dick Nixon, was perfect. The seriousness of Nixon’s flaws were in my mind tempered by the flaws I learned of in other heroes such as Jack Kennedy, Winston Churchill, and even Abraham Lincoln.

Richard Nixon stopped being my personal hero on Saturday night, October 20th, 1973 when, before the eyes of the nation, he dismissed Attorney General Elliott Richardson and his assistant William Ruckelshaus for refusing to fire special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. His pretence was the protection of the presidency. However, it was clear to me by then that Richard M Nixon was protecting himself: the presidency and even the nation, it seemed, be damned.

Thus Nixon as my hero was a thing of the past, although I did retain a sliver of affection and sadness for him until his death on April 22, 1994.

These days, pre-presidential marital infidelity can destroy a candidate, especially if he or she is caught lying about it. Candidate Bill Clinton was barely saved in 1992 when he, along with Hillary, appeared on a post Super Bowl edition of “Sixty Minutes” to acknowledge past marital problems and assure voters that the past was, after all, the past.

The fact that Democrats dodged a political bullet by not nominating John Edwards for President is pretty conclusive. Ironically, marital infidelity is almost a “tradition” across the history of European monarchs as well as at the highest levels of our government. At least six of our presidents (James Garfield, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton) are all examples. With the exception of Bill Clinton, the extramarital affairs of the other five presidents weren’t discovered and confirmed until long after their incumbency -- which was to the country’s benefit.

Want another irony? Here it is. How much better off would America be today if my first hero Richard Nixon’s most serious flaw was a single instance of marital infidelity?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY