By Jennifer J. Foster
Posted 08/27 at 03:20 PM
(0)
Comments
While the Democrats are working on unity in Denver, there’s at least one politician they’re agreeing to despise—and it isn’t John McCain.
The New York Daily News reported earlier this week that former-Democratic-vice-presidential-nominee-turned-person-non-grata John Edwards is reaching out to his former aides and financial supporters, “begging” them “to forgive him for lying about his affair” and “trying to rebuild bridges through dozens of remorseful phone calls.”
It’s not going so well.
The Daily News reports that Edwards’ efforts are being rebuffed – sometimes angrily – at almost every turn.
Many are bitter and disillusioned after swallowing his lies about his affair with a campaign staffer and vouching for his credibility with friends and journalists.
Some ignore his plaintive phone entreaties and don’t call back - even when Edwards leaves follow-up messages. A few return his calls - and give him a piece of their angry minds.
When Edwards reached one longtime confidant asking for advice, he was cut off with a terse: “I don’t want you to call me again.“
The conversation ended abruptly.
One ex-aide who received an “I-let-you-down-and-I’m-sorry” call describes Edwards’ plea for forgiveness as “kind of pathetic, to tell you the truth.“
It’s a common reaction to Edwards’ admission of his affair with Rielle Hunter – and that he repeatedly lied about it.
Longtime political reporter and pundit Walter Shapiro began covering Edwards in the spring of 2001; three years later, he made the senator and his wife the focal point of his book on the 2004 Democratic primary campaign. Shapiro and his wife developed friendships with the Edwardses, but he adds, “Without overstating these bonds, I naively believed that I knew Edwards as well as I understood anyone in the political center ring. Yet I never saw this sex scandal coming—partly because I accepted the mythology that surrounded the Edwardses’ marriage and partly because I assumed that any hint of a wandering eye would have come out during the 2004 campaign.
“But then Rielle Hunter and the National Enquirer brought us all into the real world,” Shapiro writes.
Shapiro goes on to tick off seven -– seven -– separate moments “when judgment was called for, and Edwards made the wrong choice.”
“Five days after Edwards flat-lined on ‘Nightline,’ I am still embarrassed by how badly I misjudged him both in print and in my personal feelings,” Shapiro confesses.
As for how the revelation of the scandal is reverberating through the journalism world:
Sharon Waxman shares with us the simple reason why mainstream media shouldn’t be expected to unearth stories like Edwards’ scandal.
The Palm Beach Post’s Jose Lambiet explains (second item) why you never read any scandalous stuff about Hillary Clinton in the National Enquirer during the campaign.
In discussing the scandal, New York Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins debate whether this is news at all: Collins seems to believe that such stories are only worth reporting in some (of course, subjective) circumstances, while Brooks thinks we should ignore them even if the candidate is making his moral fiber the very basis for his campaign.
Especially noteworthy is Brooks’s four-point, “semi-facetious” analysis of why people “were quick to excuse and chuckle at Bill Clinton’s many, many affairs” but are “treating Edwards like the devil incarnate for his one:”
First, Democrats only defend adulterers as long as they are still useful for the party politically.
Second, people are much harsher toward those who cheat on an ailing Elizabeth Edwards than they are toward those who cheat on Hillary Clinton.
Third, after defending Bill Clinton many people were eager to realign themselves with the forces of marital rectitude.
Fourth, men are scum and male politicians are generally the worst kind. Edwards didn’t just cheat on his wife, he cheated on his kids. Any man who can commit adultery while the images of his small son and daughter dance before his mind is capable of narcissism beyond imagining.
Finally, perhaps the most pitiful explanation for why the mainstream media didn’t get the story comes from John Drescher, the editor of Edwards’ hometown paper, the Raleigh News & Observer. Drescher explains the case Edwards made to him in asking him not to print anything on the National Enquirer’s initial story about Edwards’ then-alleged-but-now-admitted affair: “Edwards told me that the allegations were not true,” Drescher writes.
Oh, well, if he said it wasn’t true, then by all means, there’s no need to investigate! After all, we all know that politicians never lie, especially in circumstances like these. If Edwards said it, then it must be true!
Drescher continues:
He said The N&O was the paper that arrived on his doorstep every day, the one read by friends of him and his wife, Elizabeth.
He said he’d never called before to complain or state his case. Given Elizabeth’s health—she has cancer—he said it was especially important to him that the story not run in The N&O.
Did you catch that?
Edwards sought political cover by using his wife’s terminal cancer as leverage.
What an insufferable pig.
But even Elizabeth Edwards is finding a changed landscape, too; far from finding the sympathy normally afforded to jilted political wives, she’s coming under fire for helping her husband promulgate the lies about it throughout his campaign:
“I think she’s complicit,“ said Brad Crone, a Raleigh-based Democratic consultant. “Obviously, she knew. While she’s the victim, she clearly didn’t stand in the way of the cover-up.“
One Daily Kos poster wrote that Elizabeth Edwards “knew [he was running for] president with this bomb waiting to go off. She did. She kinda loses my sympathy.”
“I believe we are all owed a huge apology, not self-serving claims for pity by both John and Elizabeth Edwards, who both knew about the affair and both decided to go forward and seek the Democratic candidacy, regardless of the Titanic risk,“ someone else added.
But Eliabeth Edwards’s brother and a close friend defend her, arguing that a devastating situation was further complicated by her medical condition.
They said she decided not to leave her husband in part because she is a mother of two young children fighting a cancer that has spread to her bone and cannot be cured.
“There was anguish—excruciating anguish—for her in dealing with this,“ Hargrave McElroy, a friend, told the magazine. “She was angry and furious and everything, but at one point she had to make a choice: Do I kick him out, or do we have a 30-year marriage that can be rebuilt?“
John Edwards would do well to hang up the phone and focus on rebuilding his bridges at home before he worries any more about salvaging his political career.
At least the former may be able to be saved.
By Jennifer J. Foster
Posted 08/27 at 07:42 AM
(0)
Comments
As promised, here’s a rundown of some of my favorite quotes from CNN pundits analyzing Hillary Clinton’s speech to the Democratic National Convention last night.
Maybe it is because it’s August and the boys of summer have reached the time during the season when they decide it’s time to play with passion, but baseball analogies ruled the night.
Occasional anchor and magic-wall master John King led things off (what? I’m just following the theme):
“She’s a big game player, and this was a big-game speech,” he said.
Candy Crowley reporter/analyst (that combo is one of my annoyances, by the way) set the table, calling Clinton “a clutch player” who “delivers when she needs to.”
Longtime Clintonista James Carville added some power:
“There are skill sets and skill levels in politics, just like in anything else. You saw a lot of pitching so far, but this was a major league fastball,” Carville said, going on to marvel how it wasn’t only the brilliance of the speech itself, but Clinton’s delivery of it, that made it so remarkable. He described Clinton’s growth as a speaker since an earlier event – perhaps the funeral of Coretta Scott King? – when her presentation … well, hadn’t been worthy of the majors.
“This is a bad night for Hillary haters in the press,” Carville said. Repeating himself, he said, “There’s a skill level in politics. You’ve just seen what a Hall of Famer looks like.
“If you’re a Republican, you had a bad night tonight.”
But it was Huffington Post political director Hilary Rosen who cleared the bases:
Clinton’s speech was “a clarion call of grace and power,” Rosen said. In effect, she said, Clinton was saying to her wistful supporters, “‘I am not your therapist. I am a Democrat, and you need to get it together and vote for Barack Obama if you care’” about the issues important to Democrats: Turning the economy around, getting out of Iraq, etc.
An unBegala-like Paul Begala merely offered a tally sheet of how many times Clinton mentioned Obama’s name in the speech – no fewer than 10 times, he said – and noted that she was “much more consciously feminist” than she had been earlier in her campaign.
(Maybe he was still shell-shocked from having sounded an uncharacteristically humble and conciliatory note—“I was wrong”—after Mark Warner’s keynote address earlier.)
But in the end, at least for the “Ragin’ Cajun,” it came down to food.
“This is the opening of a three-act play,” Carville said, referring also to tonight’s speech by Bill Clinton and Obama’s nomination acceptance speech tomorrow. “They are going to have one heck of a salesman come in and get voters to sign on the bottom line.
“But people are going to decide how much they like the veal after Thursday night.”
And as for Jeffrey Toobin dubbing Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer “the star of the night” before Clinton and “the Barack Obama of 2008” and Alex Castellanos calling Clinton’s address “the lesser of two evils speech?” The only explanation is that those two missed the strongly worded advice the New York Democratic Party gave its delegates.
See also:
Thumbnail sketches of the political analysis from CNN’s political team, and a video clip of the second half of the group’s discussion following Clinton’s speech. (The first part was better, but I can’t find it.)
By Jennifer J. Foster
Posted 08/27 at 06:25 AM
(0)
Comments
So how did Hillary Clinton’s delegates react to her speech? Are they getting on board the Obama train, or are they digging in?
Both—and neither.
According to this story from the Washington Post, it just depends on whom you ask.
Reaction included:
Dutiful, soldier-like obedience: “I’ve never been prouder of a Democrat than I was tonight. She said it better than I ever could have: Everything I worked for and that she worked for would be at risk if we do anything less.“
Resigned, if not enthusiastic, acceptance: “l’ll vote for [Obama] in the roll call because that’s what Hillary wants.“
Pragmatic defiance: “We love her, but it’s our vote if we don’t trust him or don’t like him.“
And then there were those who simply weren’t going to believe her, no matter what she said.
“It’s a tactic,“ one delegate said. “Who knows what she really thinks? With all the missteps that have taken place, this is the only thing she could do. So, yes, I’m still bitter.“
At least some vanquished supporters were trying to find a happy medium between their frustration with and loyalty to their party. One delegate thinks she’s found a way to be true to both.
Weeping, Dawn Yingling, a 44-year-old single mother from Indianapolis, said that the speech was “fabulous” but that she still isn’t going to work for the Obama campaign. “She was fabulous, nothing less than I expected. It’s hard to sit here and think about she would have accomplished. We’re not stupid—we’re not going to vote for John McCain,“ she said. But she’ll limit her campaigning to a House candidate. “It will take a Congress as well as a president. That’s what I can do and be true to who I am.“
David Gergen said on CNN last night that the true test of Clinton’s speech will be whether it brings disaffected Democrats back to the fold. I don’t remember when a poll on voter sentiment was as anticipated as next week’s survey of Democrats will be. And if that wasn’t enough anticipation, the cable news networks will be just this side of apoplectic as they await the numbers if John McCain chooses Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison as his VP.
By Jennifer J. Foster
Posted 08/27 at 01:14 AM
(0)
Comments
Former vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore drew widespread raves for his speech in December 2000 when he announced that he would concede the election to George W. Bush in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that stopped the recount of votes in Florida.
Observers marveled at the change in Gore and opined that had the Al Gore of the concession speech been the one out on the campaign trail, he would have been planning an inaugural address in January instead of delivering that concession.
I heard someone say yesterday that Hillary Clinton’s speech tonight would prove whether she shares that inauspicious designation with Gore: Better off the campaign trail than on it.
Let the comparisons begin.
Hillary Clinton was nothing short of absolutely stellar tonight, taking the stage to a raucous delegate assembly whipped into a frenzy by a biographical video of the former first lady and introduced by her daughter, Chelsea.
Times like tonight are why I am so thankful for adjectives.
Hillary was confident. Rested. Assured. Direct.
The woman so often maligned for being so calculated – and calculating – seemed supremely and personally relaxed behind the podium. Gloria Borger called her “authentic.”
The former candidate criticized for being too strident on the stump was pure power tonight. Unleashed from daily tracking polls and freed from the confines of focus-group fences, she took on those delegates who have threatened to stay home – or vote Republican.
She made an energetic and unapologetic defense of liberalism and feminism, speaking with passion about the political philosophies that have made her America’s foremost female politician.
She was personable, and she got personal.
She spoke in what Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez called “emotive” language. Describing her experiences on the campaign trail:
Your stories reminded me that, every day, America’s greatness is bound up in the lives of the American people, your hard work, your devotion to duty, your love for your children, and your determination to keep going, often in the face of enormous obstacles.
You taught me so much, and you made me laugh, and, yes, you even made me cry.
You allowed me to become part of your lives, and you became part of mine.
I will always remember the single mom who had adopted two kids with autism. She didn’t have any health insurance, and she discovered she had cancer. But she greeted me with her bald head, painted with my name on it, and asked me to fight for health care for her and her children.
I will always remember the young man in a Marine Corps T-shirt who waited months for medical care. And he said to me, “Take care of my buddies. A lot of them are still over there. And then will you please take care of me?”
And I will always remember the young boy who told me his mom worked for the minimum wage, that her employer had cut her hours. He said he just didn’t know what his family was going to do …
But this wasn’t just another self-aggrandizing walk down Memory Lane. Clinton turned these word pictures into little lancets that she pointed at her fellow Democrats, even—and perhaps, especially – those who supported her, as she all but shamed them in the best section of the speech:
I want you — I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me, or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him?
Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids?
Were you in it for that young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage?
Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?
As celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse would say, BAM!
Hillary’s speech left the pundits all but stunned by the assertiveness of its message of unity and its masterful delivery. Of course, a tour de force can be a double-edged sword; it was, for Clinton’s mission to unify the party: She delivered the unity message in the best way she possibly could, but the skill and strength and power with which she did it reminded her delegates all over again why they want her atop the ticket.
The words of Clinton’s speech had barely finished echoing off the convention hall walls when CNN’s Jessica Yellin managed to find Ann Price Mills, a Clinton delegate who says she may not vote this fall since she can’t vote for Clinton for president.
Hillary made the Democratic platform “more than just dreams,” Mills said; “I saw how it could be reality … She could have made it happen.” Mills went on to say that “experience counts” and that Obama’s “résumé is just …” and her voice trailed off.
It wasn’t long before Republicans began firing away on the message du jour. GOP strategist (and former Mitt Romney commercial maker) Alex Castellanos said he felt that the speech was underwhelming and unimpressive. (Seriously, Alex?) He pointed out that Clinton didn’t make any mention of her chief complaint about Obama during the primary – his lack of experience and readiness to be commander-in-chief – or try to back away from it at all.
Castellanos’ point may have been factually accurate. But it’s difficult to take a pundit seriously on subjective issues when he won’t even acknowledge the ridiculously obvious—in this case, the polished, passionate and perfectly aggressive composition of Clinton’s pitch.
Finally, you know Hillary Clinton did a great job when the pundits are saying that the pressure is on Barack Obama for Thursday night’s acceptance speech.
Hillary? Putting pressure on Obama in the area he has owned since 2004?
But that’s just how good it was.
Partially because of its historical context but mostly because of its content and delivery, it’s my humble opinion that this speech will go down as one of the best in the history of American politics.
Hillary Clinton: A+++++.
If she had been this candidate on the trail, she’s be speaking on Thursday night.
Also:
Read the transcript of Hillary Clinton’s remarks here, or click here to watch the 25-minute speech in full (sections mentioned in this post are at 7:38 and 15:03).
Check back here tomorrow for a rundown of some of the best post-speech quotes I heard.
