John Edwards, You Comfort Me

By Rebecca Powell, 8-26-08

	Caption: Thank you, John

I thought it was the worst thing a politician could do.

I thought it was the worst thing that could happen in a marriage.

Oh, how I hated the Lewinsky drama! The blue dress, the cigar, all left a bad taste in the mouth of my sophomore collegiate self. My little Bible-belt sensibilities were offended, insulted. Why sex in the oval office? On the table? Disgusting. And it scared me a little. Hillary, the prototypical smart girl, betrayed over and over again for women with big chests and bigger hair, hit a little too close to home. Smart girls one-upped by the cheerleaders once again.

I remember classmates spreading the details of the Ken Starr report, peeking over the shoulder of a co-worker as she pulled it up on the screen. Engrossing, and eventually tiring, but for a few moments in time, the President of the United States’ sex life took up a significant corner of my brain.  I am older now; no one’s sex life is very interesting, and the mysteries and compromises of marriage are my daily reality. Still, you would think I would have some reaction to the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter affair, that my moral sensibilities would squirm, that I could muster some outrage. I don’t and I can’t. Instead, I am awash in nostalgia for a simpler time, a time when I did not fret about the global economy, the slipping dollar, the muscle flexing of Russia, or lives lost in the sands of Iraq. There was time to worry about sex, power and semen on a blue dress. There was time to debate the ethics of friendship and marriage, to relish the thought of Hillary breaking china over Bill’s head. There was time and space for prurient interests, for lascivious gossip.

You took me back, John Edwards, to a time before 9-11, Iraq, the financial crises. The whispers of your affair, an illegitimate child, they have all comforted me, made me remember when an affair in the White House seemed like the ultimate betrayal. That you chose a woman with dyed blonde hair was just the icing on a sordid story of financial and marital misdeeds.

Yes, you have not yet made it to the White House, and Elizabeth’s cancer adds another tragic dimension, so the situation is a bit different. In Oklahoma, I went to high school with boys like you, John. Smooth-talking, pretty athletes are as common as dandelions in the South. They grow up and become our lawyers, preachers, politicians, and car salesmen.  We simultaneously praise your achievements and despise your genetic giftings.  Athletes in the South have been surrounded by females ready to fan their egos since they scored their first little league home-run, paving the way for a different kind of base-running. Naturally, I found your affair completely in keeping with the image I’ve constructed of you, however off-base and biased it may be.

But, I never figured you for a comforter, John. Sure, I heard your spill about the two Americas and your fight against poverty, but you were so bright and shiny that I could not make the words align with the speaker. You proved me wrong. You are a comforter. In your own way, albeit an affair, you lightened my days, reminded me of simpler times when I was less aware and much more naive. Thank you, John. For a second or two, I forgot to think like an informed adult.