The buzz is that John Edwards had an extramarital affair with a woman who worked for his campaign, and now this affair may have produced a love child. This is vehemently denied by both the Edwards campaign and the woman in question, and coming as it does from the National Enquirer it is, let’s face it, probably untrue. That’s not the interesting part. As Ed Morrissey (Captain’s Quarters) points out, the interesting part is the Enquirer’s ties to the Clinton campaign. Did Hillary Clinton manufacture this scandal to destroy John Edwards?
Mickey Kaus doesn’t think it makes sense for Clinton to have planted this scandal because, he says, Edwards is actually helping Clinton by taking anti-Hillary votes away from Barack Obama in Iowa. Well, yes and no. Yes, Edwards is taking anti-Hillary votes away from Obama in Iowa. But no, he is not necessarily helping Clinton, because there is evidence that he is also doing better among caucus goers than Clinton. See, for example, anecdotal evidence from Andrew Sullivan. There is some speculation that Hillary Clinton may actually come in third in Iowa.
The Clinton campaign knows it can’t afford to come in third. Hillary has just regained a significant lead in New Hampshire (H/T: The Moderate Voice), and if Clinton placed third in Iowa that lead would likely evaporate as New Hampshire voters would lose confidence in her. Given rumors that the Obama campaign has peaked in Iowa, and perhaps elsewhere, there is also the risk that John Edwards could come from behind and steal the nomination out from under both of them. In other words, Edwards has now become a serious risk, and the Clinton campaign knows it. That would certainly be motive enough to manufacture a scandal that would destroy Edwards.
Whether anyone has manufactured it or not, this story could be the perfect scandal if it catches fire. There is virtually no way to prove that these allegations are false. A paternity test would have to wait until after the baby is born. Perhaps if John Edwards submitted to a lie detector test, that could help, but the likelihood of a political candidate submitting to a lie detector test is slim. The mere perception of scandal could be enough to upset his apple cart in Iowa and elsewhere, even if the allegations are proven false. Edwards’ best hope is that this story won’t be picked up by the mainstream media because it comes from an unreliable source, the National Enquirer. But with the blogs lighting up about this and with the Drudge Report picking it up, that hope seems to be rapidly diminishing.
To conclude, just in case the irony is lost on anyone – if the Clinton campaign did manufacture this, then Hillary Clinton really is as cold and calculating as everyone says she is. How else could you describe a woman who, having gone through the devastation of a similar scandal, would unleash such devastation upon a political opponent and his cancer-stricken wife? The mere perception that this scandal was manufactured by the Clintons has significantly reduced my likelihood of voting for Hillary in the primaries, and I was previously leaning her way.
Filed under: Democrats, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Media, News, Politics
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Good piece, Nate. Direct and punchy, just like they pay for. (And if they’re not, shop around! Sorry, Lance.) I believe you not because I detest that woman as much as most folks do, but because I happened to run down two of the rumors about Rudy’s alleged crimes, and traced them to the Clinton News Network, which even the Los Angeles Times calls “a corrupt news organization” for its selling of the Clintons, its undermining of the Republican candidates, and its adolescent hijacking of the important presidential debate process.
It turned out in both cases that CNN had plagiarized the reports from the previous day’s Bloomberg stories, both of which was a transparent “breeder story” meant to give the bigger outlets cover as they fanned the flaming falsehoods. The Bloomberg stories originated with the same “reporter” a sometime Clinton operator with whom the stories had been “placed” by Clinton’s oppo people. Needless to say they were both tortious defamations, utterly untrue, as any staff researcher, editor or downstream reporter could have established as readily as I did, from public records.
Bloomberg and Sen. Clinton have made common cause: they both regard Giuliani as a rival, and an impediment to their ambitions. Time/CNN is their principal outlet. (See the cover of Time.) As an old newshound myself, this drastic corruption of the Fourth Estate is to me far more important than the career of Mr. Giuliani, but I developed a cautious respect for him after I’d seen how badly certain interests want to ruin him utterly, and with the utmost contempt for their clientele and their clientele’s democratic governing structures. (I find it more difficult to sympathize with the transparent opportunist Mr. Edwards, but he is the client of a very dear friend of mine and after reading your piece, bigod I do sympathize with him.)
But my sympathies don’t matter beans compared with the seriousness of this problem you’re onto. In thirty years I’ve never seen anything like it. Not anything. I sure hope our neighbors and the Europeans aren’t watching closely, because if they are they’ll almost certainly form the opinion that our system of governance is brittle, and not to be commended to other nations. As you know, something like that happened to democracy before, in the 1930s.
Some of these things about Giuliani and Edwards may be said of Dr. Paul also. Those three men should under no circumstances attack one another; on the contrary, they should, but won’t, make common cause in the interest of their country.
Stay on this, please.