DECEPTION: The Lessons of John Edwards

When I think of John Edwards, I am reminded of a 1967 film, “Guide for the Married Man.” In one scene, Ed (played by Walter Matthau) tells Paul (played by Robert Morse) that if his wife ever accuses him of cheating, “Deny, deny, deny.” Denial and deception are what John Edwards is all about. This week’s John Edwards headline (there’s something new every week about this guy) is that Elizabeth met the lovechild, and finally decided she had had enough. They’re now legally separated.

This is one of the more extreme stories of our time. We’ve seen sleaze and/or really poor judgment before (Bill Clinton?), but the American public has not had the John Edwards experience until now. Edwards was running for President as Mr. America, when behind the scenes he referred to some of his constituents as “fat rednecks,” instructed an aide to “handle it” when he found out his mistress was pregnant, and later made a sex tape with her. All of this occurred just as Elizabeth Edwards was battling cancer. Somehow John Edwards convinced himself that we Americans would not see beyond the façade. We did. We do. He’s a low life.

What’s the lesson here? I think there are all kinds of messages that come through this story. For one thing, if you’re a high profile person today, and you consciously decide to do something stupid, the prolific nature of digital media is probably going to get you.The very media you depend on to market yourself to the country will be that which sends you into obscurity. This is just the story that media hungers for today. It has all of the ingredients: Politics, sex, tragedy, cheating, lying and deception. You could not make this up. Edwards underestimated the media, the risk he was taking and the collective wisdom of the American people.

But there are bigger lessons to be learned here for American voters. Edwards had the kind of movie star good looks and Clintonesque charisma that intoxicated voters. He preached a grass roots, populist-like agenda so appealing to middle America. He seemed to be ‘one of us,’ even though we knew of his $400 haircuts, 25,000-square-foot estate and multi-millionaire status. None of it mattered when we saw him announce his candidacy in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans outside of a house he was helping to restore from Hurricane Katrina. The lesson is age old: look beyond the obvious. What is behind the carefully coiffed and rehearsed image? As voters, we may have to demand a more intrusive investigation of our candidates. The new age debate about privacy may have to come to a halt at campaign time, and we may simply have to insist that we know more of a candidate’s personal life.

Had we done more digging, we would have uncovered the fact that Edwards was something of a high class ambulance chaser in his earlier life. He was a plaintiff’s attorney who represented a number of people who brought suits against doctors and hospitals after their children had been born with defects due to alleged mistakes made in the delivery room. Edwards made tens of millions of dollars with these cases, and legend has it that he was very dramatic in the courtroom. The story is told that in one of his closing arguments, he actually brought up the subject of his own son, who was killed in a car accident at age 16. There wasn’t a dry eye in the jury box. With his distinctive Southern accent and ability to deceive, Edwards was a powerhouse attorney, and one who collected one-third of each plaintiff’s favorable judgment. In some cases those judgments went as high as $25 million. You know that guy in your own community who goes on TV and says, “Hurt in a car accident? Get all you deserve and get it fast?” Essentially, that was John Edwards, and some of us might have cringed at his aggressive, manipulative courtroom tactics.

Had the media or even private citizens groups dug a bit deeper into Edwards’ personal life, we may have discovered the fact that Elizabeth Edwards was as ambitious as or more so than John. Now we know how badly she wanted to be First Lady. So badly that she stumped smilingly with Edwards on the campaign trail, never letting her image or her demeanor belie her rage about the affair she knew Edwards was having with Rielle Hunter. In the much ballyhooed, recently released book “Game Change,” authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann claim, “…that there was no one on the national stage for whom the disparity between public image and private reality was vaster or more disturbing.” Andrew Young, the aide who Edwards enlisted to pretend he was the father of Hunter’s child, paints a duplicitous picture of Elizabeth in his new book, “The Politician.” She comes off as temperamental, controlling and prone to histrionics. A recent piece in the New York Times seems to further that impression.

Does it matter to us, the voters, if Edwards cheats on his wife and lies about it, and that his wife is not what she seems? It does. We were supposed to have learned our lesson years ago from the Richard Nixon debacle. As it turns out, his own words revealed that he was racist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic. We needed to know that, but we didn’t until he was dead. These are not the John Kennedy days, when a Presidential candidate can carry on secret trysts with lots of women and the press knows about it, but does not report it. We’re in the digital age. The press owes us full disclosure, and deep investigation. And we owe ourselves the discipline to pay attention to a candidate’s behavior and character. Had the stars aligned themselves just a bit off center in 2008, John Edwards would be President of the United States right now, moral warts and all. Presumably his secret squeeze and love child would be safely ensconced in an undisclosed location. Elizabeth Edwards would likely be berating the White House staff, just as she reportedly did to her husband’s campaign staff. And who would suffer most for their personal indiscretions and personality flaws? That would be you and me.

SEX SCANDAL UPDATE

Oh don’t get excited. The headline is irresistibly seductive, and here you are. Unfortunately you’re not getting any sex here. It just seems like time to update some of our most tawdry political bad behavior stories. What’s John Edwards up to? Is Liz divorcing him? Why is David Vitter about to be investigated…again? And Senator John Ensign from Nevada – you remember: he’s the guy who allegedly had an affair with an ex-campaign aide and may have been the recipient of a little strong-arming by his paramour’s husband. (Very “David Letterman, right?) Ensign thought it would all just go away, but…it hasn’t. It’s all so trashy, isn’t it? And we hang on every word, don’t we? Go figure.

The Edwards epic just keeps gaining new layers. Now, The National Enquirer reports Elizabeth Edwards may divorce John Edwards. The new book by Andrew Young -- Edwards’ former aide who claimed paternity to Rielle Hunter’s child until he didn’t want to any longer—reportedly reveals Edwards may have had more campaign trail dalliances with more campaign workers. Oy. And let’s not get too journalistically snooty about the Enquirer. The Enquirer broke the Edwards story, and everything it has reported so far has been accurate.

I told people way back when, when Edwards was campaigning for president, that I did not trust him. For me, it started when he came to New Orleans, to the Ninth Ward, and did a live TV feed that showcased him “helping” rehab a house that was damaged by Katrina. Word spread through town pretty fast that as soon as the cameras were off, he put the tools down and got into a waiting black SUV and took off. Edwards was (and is) all image, and not enough substance. To his credit, he does some good work, even now. He is reportedly very active in a campaign called “Half in 10,” which aims to cut poverty in half in 10 years. He even made a public appearance on its behalf as recently as last week. And say what you will about the guy, it cannot be easy to make those appearances right now. You just never know when we pesky reporters are likely to ask him if he spread his DNA further than earlier reported. That’s what we do. We ask.

Meanwhile, guess who’s back in the public prurient consciousness for a minute -- David Vitter. He of the high priced Washington call girl scandal of a couple of years ago. How’s this: he calls for an investigation of ACORN after the scandal that suggested ACORN workers were counseling prostitutes. About five seconds after he comes forward with his outrage over ACORN, a group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington steps up to suggest Vitter himself should be investigated. After all, the group reasons, it seems likely that Vitter violated the state’s rule that says it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to “commit a criminal act especially one that reflects adversely on the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects.”

Do you love it or what? Vitter has never really appeared to be the brightest bulb in the room, but even he has to be scratching his head right now and asking himself what the hell he was thinking. Washington in 2009 is just high theatre. It’s got everything. Sex, scandals, cover-ups, under-the-table deals, power…it’s like Dynasty on acid.

John Ensign even looks like Blake Carrington from Dynasty. Suddenly, the seemingly dormant Ensign affair seems to be back in the headlines. It seems despite their earlier show of support, Ensign’s Republican cronies are abandoning him faster than a gaggle of feminists at a Chris Brown concert. Here’s the rub: The New York Times reports that Ensign will be investigated by the Justice Department, over allegations that not only did he get his secret squeeze’s husband a job, but that he may have had a severe conflict of interest when the husband, Douglas Hampton, started lobbying Ensign on behalf of his clients. Hampton was subject to a one-year delay in any lobbying efforts because he had been a top Congressional aide. According to the Times, preliminary whispers indicate the FBI may be involved with any potential investigation of Ensign.

All of this tawdry stuff causes one to think about two things: judgment and privacy. The online media explosion has created a new paradigm…well, maybe not that new. It seems now one can live a public life or a private life, but there are no gray areas in between. And since we all know that, one has to wonder how an experienced public figure – a legislator – can exercise such deplorable judgment. In the end, it’s about “getting away with it” for these guys. I just wish Edwards, Vitter, Ensign, et al would wise up and realize the last guy that got away with it was John F. Kennedy. The entire Washington press corps knew Kennedy was getting away with it and via their silence they aided and abetted. That was 1960. This is now. Are you listening boys?

WHY CRONKITE MATTERED

Over the next few days you will hear people talking about Walter Cronkite in the same tone they would talk about a relative, longtime co-worker or lifelong friend. He was all of that. He was part of the American family, a guy who always seemed to be working for us, intent on making sure we knew the truth. Walter Cronkite was to 20th century America, as critically important to the public good as any man has ever been.

As a newsman, Cronkite was the epitome of a straight arrow. He conveyed information in a steady cadence that lulled our intellect, and he looked straight into the lens as if he were standing in our living room breathing the same air as we breathed. He managed to do that until one night in February, 1968 when he said this: “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.”

It was as stunning a moment in television as had ever been seen. Cronkite never shifted his gaze from the camera, not for a millisecond. He meant what he said, and he wanted you to know what was true about the debacle that was Vietnam. In those days Cronkite was the anchorman for the CBS Evening News, and it was the practice during Vietnam for news programs to tell the total number of dead U.S. soldiers every day. Perhaps Walter Cronkite wearied of reporting the tens of thousands of Americans who were dying for nothing in a tiny place just South of China that most of us had never heard of. Or maybe it had to do with his up close and personal view of Vietnam. He went there in 1968 to report on the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, an attack by the Viet Cong which showed a cunning and aggression that none of us had known they had. Without Cronkite’s report, most of us would never have understood how significant the attack was. And without his courage to editorialize on television for the first time, it would have been difficult for him to tell us the full truth of Vietnam. Watch:

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He was universally applauded for his guts and for his candor. Reportedly, Cronkite had been an opponent of the war as far back as 1965, but never publicly uttered one slanted word about the war until his conscience would no longer allow him to remain neutral. So many public communicators today could gain so much from Cronkite’s unprecedented example of self-restraint.

Five years earlier, most of us saw for the first time, Cronkite’s real mettle. It was the day John Kennedy was assassinated. Cronkite was reporting live on air when the first call came in about the President having been shot. We were a different America then. We were still naïve. We were still early 20th century mentality, rather than late 20th century mindset. That a President could be killed in cold blood was not remotely considerable prior to November 22, 1963. So we needed a steady voice and controlled guide to gently usher us through the horror of it. Cronkite stepped up to do that for us. And yet, the moment he told us of JFK’s death, we saw his heart, if even for a brief moment. What follows is the footage from CBS in the several minutes leading up to official word that Kennedy was dead. Kennedy was on his way to a luncheon at a downtown ballroom, and in this clip you will see fascinating footage of what was going on in the ballroom as Cronkite and his associates reported the series of events. Watch:

Walter Cronkite mattered not only because of who he was, but also because of when he was. He took over the anchor chair at CBS in 1963, just as the country teetered on the precipice of social chaos. He occupied the chair from 1963 to 1982, first through a decade when our leaders were repeatedly shot dead on pavements coast to coast. In between it all, some say slavery finally officially ended as the civil rights movement resulted in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. When Cronkite spoke out against the Vietnam War he was 52 years old, at a time when most of the anti-war movement participants were college age. As such, he truly legitimized the movement. When Cronkite told us Martin Luther King was dead, he rightly referred to him as the “apostle of non-violence” in the first sentence of his report. He presided over America’s greatest adventure, the Space Age, and when men finally did walk on the moon, it was Cronkite that two of every three Americans were tuned in to, just so they could be sure it was true. His unbridled glee upon reporting on the Apollo 11 moon walk was infectious and brought us all together at a time when we were nothing, if not splintered. Watch:

His was the voice we depended on during Presidential conventions, to guide us through the confusion and allow us to understand how our system operated. When the Watergate debacle came, Cronkite was among the earliest to recognize the true weight of the events, and one could say it was he who allowed us to understand that President Nixon must resign. By that time, I, and many others in my generation had opted for journalism school. Because of people like Cronkite, David Brinkley, Eric Severeid and John Chancellor, we saw journalism as something bordering on noble. We learned by watching them that information is critical and truth is something you just have to keep pushing and pushing. Although by the early 1970s when I was in school, Cronkite was not really yet considered the legend that he is now, he was nonetheless the name that came up most frequently in reporting and writing classes. Cronkite started out as a print journalist, and then took such huge risks as reporting World War II from the front. We were dazzled by the gigantic leaps he took in his career. No one else seemed as passionate about getting the word out to you and me.

With Cronkite, integrity, hard work and determination trumped the yet-to-be-born Internet, or Twitter or Facebook. He didn’t need any of it, because he was all about simply communicating the real world to real people. I believe I quietly observed Cronkite all of my life. I loved watching him get old, and older still (right, with Joanna Simon, who became his companion after the death of his wife) because of the way he continued to go at it into his 90s. He restores our faith in ourselves because collectively we decided to trust Walter Cronkite a long, long time ago. As it turns out, our trust was perfectly placed. We knew what we saw when we saw it. He is, above all else, the true story of the best of 20th century America. Born in 1916, he was privileged to live to see the bulk of a full century, and it was our privilege to hear about his time and learn about our world from him. From our industrialized nation to our age of information, he was able to stay in step and keep us aligned with him.

For the past several days reporter after broadcaster after journalist has said, “There will never be another like him.” I am hopeful that there will be others like him; that he set the bar high enough for people to want to emulate his adventurousness, his ease of communication and his dedication to truth. Walter Cronkite gave us all something to aim for, and we thank him.

YES, MS. KENNEDY, WE KNOW...

If you're an American of a certain age, Caroline Kennedy is iconic in your cultural frame of reference. Those idyllic photos of the six-year-old Caroline with her sandy-haired dad, President John F. Kennedy are ingrained in your psyche. The image of Caroline, in perfect little girl coat and white gloves, descending the Capitol steps with her mother, Jackie, on the day of JFK's funeral. And then the prevailing image of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg as the cultural doyenne of Manhattan, the cerebral author, wife and mother. It is all sort of perfect, is it not?

About a nano-second after Hillary Clinton was named Secretary of State to be, news of Kennedy's desire to replace her in the U.S. Senate spanned the globe. Media loved it, we mid-20th century babies ate it up, and reporters could not wait to ink it up in every daily coast to coast, and digitize it on every news and information site from The Drudge Report to Perez Hilton. Hot copy? You bet. Jalapeno hot. Pamela Anderson Hot. Eliot Spitzer hot, but in a good way.

On December 27, Kennedy sat down with the big one - the New York Times. Speaking to political reporters Nicholas Confessore and David M. Halbfinger, Kennedy waxed prophetic about, well, not much. In her lengthy interview she refers to "issues that are important to me," but never really mentions what they are. She gushes about her uncle Teddy, but never quite gets around to stating which initiatives of his she would champion, especially in the event of his sudden retirement. She claims, "No one has a more supportive husband than I do," but she fails to explain why she has essentially dropped the last name of Schlossberg. When directly asked what kind of management experience she has and what sort of staff she has, she responds only, "Obviously, you need to build a team." The management question garners no response.

Here is a woman who was born into the political process and was raised on campaign strategy. Yet when asked to allow the electorate insight into her positions, views on critical issues and plans for transition into public service, she offers nothing. Our full hearts want Caroline Kennedy to be a winner. The entire nation has watched her lose her family, one by one, in devastating and sometimes unnatural ways. But our increasing political savvy tells us to step back and take a beat. Maybe Caroline is not the appropriate Kennedy to maintain the longstanding American tradition of keeping a Kennedy in the U.S. Senate.

As an aside, it is probably worth mentioning that in her interview with the New York Times, she began several of her responses with "um," and more than 100 times, used the phrase "You know." Here is a snippet of the transcript from that interview:

These are distinctively critical times in the U.S. Every person sent to represent the electorate needs a defined legislative mission and a clear understanding of the process by which the mission can be accomplished. No one doubts the intelligence and sincerity of Caroline Kennedy. She has gained the respect of the American people, but not as a legislator. If the country were on more stable footing, perhaps the people of New York could afford to offer Kennedy the time it would take her to learn the system and become an effective Senator. But stability is not in site now, and perhaps Kennedy's formidable skills might be better used in the diplomatic arena. Kennedy already has a respectable alliance with President-elect Obama. The new President knows talent when he sees it - he will find the best way for Kennedy to use hers.

To state this in its most simplistic terms: There are more than three million Americans. There are 100 U.S. Senators. Shouldn't those 100 individuals be the brightest, the best, the most talented among us? Should they not be people who have a clear plan to rescue the nation from its current economic quagmire? Should they not be people who know how to move a critical piece of legislation through the system and fast track it to benefit the constituents? And even though the current situation requires the Governor of New York to appoint a Senator to replace Clinton, should that person not be one who has earned the position by a clear demonstration of commitment, experience and determination to work for the citizens? Unfortunately, Kennedy's resume is not terribly substantive, and certainly not ready for legislative prime time.

DALLAS 1963: Our Defining Moment

The 60’s started 45 years ago today.

On November 22, 1963 President John F. Kennedy was shot through the head while riding in his convertible in Dallas. It was a beautiful day, and he and his wife were beautiful people. People lined the streets and waved. He had that megawatt smile going on all through Dealy Plaza, until something popped in the air and he grabbed his throat with both hands and slumped forward. Jackie Kennedy crawled over the back seat onto the trunk of the car. No one knows exactly why. It is a black and white image carved into the American collective psyche as deeply as a bomb hitting Pearl Harbor 22 years earlier, or planes hitting the World Trade Center 38 years later.

As it turns out, 45 years can offer huge perspective on what it all meant. The Kennedy assassination was the pivotal moment of the 20th century. Take the influenza epidemic of 1919, World War I, World War II, the Great Depression, the invention of talkies, the advent of television, Elvis and Sinatra, and added together they represent a fraction of the impact on the culture that Kennedy’s death had. We have never recovered. Not really. The moment the first shot rang out from the nearby school book depository, there was no turning back. For a long time, there was no moving forward either. We were paralyzed.

If you were not living then, and you wonder how this killing of Kennedy so altered the American psyche, consider this. Think about the groundswell of political worship heaped on Barack Obama in the past year or so, and especially right now. Then multiply that exponentially, and you will begin to comprehend the Kennedy influence on this country. It is not to say that everyone loved him. Like Obama, he did not win the 1960 election by a landslide. It was, in fact, a closer race than the Obama/McCain contest. But there was something about his ascent into the presidency that lit this nation up – way up. There was an aura – it was this seductive blend of charm, mystique, class, beauty, sex and power.

After the down home understatement of the Truman years and the lackluster grayness of the Eisenhower moment, the Kennedys were our Hollywood-perfect family leaders. We were starstruck.

Beyond our intoxication, however, was the indisputable evidence that November 22 changed the world. Television suddenly shifted from the great experiment it had always been to the true national conduit of information. Low tech, still evolving and certainly black and white, television grew up quickly once the President was rushed to Parkland Hospital. What follows is footage of NBC News struggling to report the assassination news,without the advantages of today's digital media:

The word was out among reporters that one side of his head had been shot off, but the decorum of the era dictated that this information would not be broadcast. It would be kept secret, just as Kennedy’s assignations with sex goddess Marilyn Monroe had been buried.Washington media knew all along about Monroe, but never reported it. The news of Kennedy’s missing flesh would be concealed as tightly as the information about his daily battles with pain from colitis and Addison’s disease. All of this is public knowledge today, but in 1963 journalists had boundaries, and they rarely colored outside the lines.

For those of us who were children, watching the next four days of non-stop television coverage--including the on-air murder of chief assassination suspect Lee Harvey Oswald—was surreal. In our young minds watching Oswald get shot as he was transported from his jail cell was pretty much just like watching a bad guy get shot on Gunsmoke. But the fear and shock on our parents’ faces was a whole new category of discomfort for us. Watch the following video to witness the exact moment that the television medium grew up:All in one day we found out that the President, previously considered invincible, was just a man; and our parents, previously considered to be unshakably grown up, were as shaken as children who had just been scolded. It was our introduction to the omnipotence of vulnerability.

What followed those November days was a redefining of the American culture. In a millisecond, the Beatles showed up on American soil and solidified an already burgeoning generation gap. Lyndon Johnson, the good ole boy, wheeler dealer Senator from Texas assumed the presidency, a role that would never suit him and ultimately prove to be his undoing.The Civil Rights movement took on a new sense of urgency until its leader, Dr. Martin Luther King came eye to eye with a bullet in Memphis. Perhaps in response to a decade of sheer turmoil, young Americans discovered and indulged in mind-altering drugs. Skirts went up, morality went down and the fully useless conflict called Vietnam claimed more than 50,000 American lives. For nothing. Nothing at all.

The sixties should be a cautionary tale for early 21st century American culture. With our economy tanking, and the nation again embroiled in a war without purpose, even a charismatic, charmer like Obama cannot be a one-man King Midas. Let’s see – how to put this: Hope Good - Unrealistic Expectations Bad. Or, a man, any man, even Obama, is just a man. A culture and its heritage should be our teachers and our guide. So yes we can. We can use the most critical moment from last century as our guide. With 45 years of collective wisdom in our national back pocket, I believe we can do much, much better this time. Yes, we can.