Why Edwards is worse than Arnold

Jeez, this is a tough category. Arnold knocked up the domestic help, then kept her around for over a decade while he secretly co-raised their bastard child. That is some hard-core Harlequin Romance bad-guy shit.

Then this Edwards guy, he goes and cheats on his terminally ill wife, produces a love-child with a woman other than said dying wife, and engages in a lengthy, complicated cover-up of the whole affair while he was running as the Vice Presidential candidate on a major party ticket.

Let’s start out by pretending I have empathy with these scoundrels. Arnold spent his entire adult life having women literally throw themselves at him. You can’t just apply the brakes to your dick like that. And Kennedy women are nothing if not used to being cheated on by their philandering better-halves.

And Edwards’ wife is dying, which is probably a turn-off in the sack. Another pretty boy, used to having women at his beck and call, when Option A is no longer desirable but Plan B is, his dick is going to go a-wandering.

Both indiscretions are just extreme examples of the old Jerry Seinfeld line, “Women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place.” Most men are only as faithful as their options, which is why celebrity marriages tend not to last. I would guess the same rule applies to women, perhaps to a lesser extent.

I’ve already taken Arnold out to the woodshed for a spanking, now it’s Edwards’ turn.

And as in Arnold’s case, where I didn’t get on his shit for cheating—if it was Bill Clinton’s ‘personal business’ then, and I believe it was, it’s Arnold’s personal business now—but I thrashed him to within an inch of his life for making a fraud of his public face for the last ten years of his life. He chose to make his family part of his public image, and when he did that, he didn’t just lie to Maria, he lied to all Californians. To my mind, that’s when Arnold crossed the line between personal indiscretion and the public’s right to know.

But what Edwards did was infinitely worse. Arnold lied to a state, Edwards lied to the whole country. Worse, by keeping such an enormous, juicy secret at a time when he was running for the second highest office in the land, he left himself wide open to blackmail by an opposition party that had long since demonstrated that no tactic was beneath it (coughswiftboatscough). It was don’t-start-a-land-war-in-southeast-Asia stupid. It was careless and reckless and potentially dangerous on a Tom Clancy-scenario level.

Mind you, I’m not making a moral judgment here. My house is made of as much glass of anybody else’s; I’m taking Edwards to task for putting his ego ahead of his country by running for office with this career-destroying scandal just waited in the wings to be exploited by his enemies, in the event that he attained a position of great power.

As bad as his moral lapse was, it’s none of my business. As a voting liberal, however, my candidate being politically compromised before he’s even out of the gate, but choosing to run anyhow? That damned sure is my business.

I hope they lock this cocky asshole up in some red state penitentiary and make him wander the yard, unprotected, in one of his $5,000 suits and $400 haircuts. And a “Hello, my name is…” nametag.

He likes careless and reckless sexual behavior. He’s going to love being the new fish in genpop.