For a campus newspaper entrenched in the subculture of Evangelical America, you might expect the news of a prominent Democratic politician’s extramarital affair to burst from these pages carried on the wings of indignant moralistic outrage and a hint of “toldjah.”

Because this is my third and final year offering the allegedly conservative view for this page of the Lee Clarion, I’ve probably earned enough points in pomposity to assume that faithful readers can achieve the proper state of indignation on their own. I’ll gladly accept your e-mails and gifts of appreciation for giving you the intellectual credit you deserve because, frankly, I’m the lone voice in the media wilderness right now giving you any credit at all. But since that might be a theme this semester, we’ll let this theory rest for now.
John Edwards of North Carolina belongs in a certain context, and not that of a lying, cheating and brazenly arrogant adulterer. When National Enquirer broke the shockingly legitimate story of his extramarital affair, their objective clearly sought to redefine Edwards in such a way. But we know better.
From now on, when we hear the name John Edwards, we still must not think first of his lip-quivering admission to Bob Woodruff staged conveniently in a time slot opposite the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing. We will remember John Edwards, Vice Presidential candidate and Democratic Party standard-bearer alongside John F. Kerry just four very short years ago. We will remember that before he cowered in the bathroom at the Beverly Hills Hotel hiding from reporters, and before he staged the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans to suit his most recent Presidential announcement, he lurked cheekily at the top of the national ballot, just three million individual endorsements, thirty-four electoral votes, and the proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency.
And we’ll remember that, four years later, he publicly threw it all away for the sake of Barack Obama.
People usually act appalled when it is said that one candidate or another “will say or do anything to get elected.” This is one of those times. As a cheating politician, John Edwards could join a veritable Hall of Shame of prominent figures of great respective promise who slumped away into obscurity with varying degrees of remorse.
But he can’t because he’s not going anywhere. He’s prancing front and center across a stage set against a backdrop of far more important issues, and not just for Republicans to claim. The party of John Edwards, despite its overtures of potential and promises for change, teeters on the edge of real trouble. Just as Speaker Pelosi’s leadership has been unable to channel a congressional majority into any semblance of legislative unity, the Democratic Party on the national scene has come to exemplify the very model of ferocious dissension, as one of the nastiest primaries in recent history has heightened awareness of the Democrats’ grossly unfair super delegate system.
With this, Barack Obama approaches a convention in which Hillary Clinton appears to stand for nomination regardless of his stellar popularity – and regardless of John Edwards’ sincere efforts to distract you from this unfavorable reality.
Do I suggest a conspiracy theory? Maybe, if you’re into that kind of thing. In politics, no assumption is outlandish. But more importantly, I suggest that which our professors ask of us in class and that which our politicians tend to discourage too frequently – simply that we question even those issues that seem at first too trivial to consider. Otherwise, look at the bigger picture, and consider the incentive John Edwards felt that drew him out of the safe recesses of the men’s room of a posh hotel. Like everything else that seems frustrating and unfair to us right now, it might have more to do with gas prices than you think.