By now there's probably been far too much written about the Edwards revelations, but at the risk of scandal fatigue, I'm going to discuss another aspect that a few have touched on. Specifically, what about the policies and problems Edwards was trying to address? What about the bigger picture?
It's very easy to cynically dismiss any politician when they prove to be merely human. Failings in one aspect of their lives tend to make everything else suspect in the eyes of onlookers. I expect there are any number of people who will now write of Edwards as one more ambitious fraud who had no business running for the White House and will dismiss everything else he brought to the table.
This is nothing new of course, and it's not just limited to politics. History is full of people who had remarkable abilities, major accomplishments, and such while simultaneously and/or subsequently also manifesting unfortunate or even despicable behavior. If consistency is to be the standard for virtue in individuals, then society repeatedly fails that test. The line between tragedy and farce is neither straight nor of uniform width. How and where it is drawn is as much about culture as character.
Was Edwards advocacy for the poor, for better health care all a sham to get elected, or was it sincere? Does his case for the importance of real populist government stand or fall with his own reputation? Do problems with his personal and private relationships mean his public positions are all discredited?
If someone's accomplishments say a great deal about them, so do their failings. Both give insights into personal character - and the reaction to them by the public says just as much about society at large.
It is a paradox that often those who proclaim the primacy of character as a virtue, and do so most successfully in the public's eye, are those who have the least. What Edwards has learned and is learning from his ordeal is still ongoing, and the final result is yet to be seen. But, his remorse seems genuine, and his attempts to face up to the consequences of his actions seem to include a significant desire to try to make amends - if badly executed. He may have failed as a political 'white knight' but he may well be on his way to being a better human being.
Contrast that with President Bush, Dick Cheney, or John McCain. All of them have behaved abominably, have learned nothing, and maintain a pretense of ethical behavior that no one is allowed to question. They show no sign of remorse for anything they've done, and no desire at all to accept responsibility for their actions - at least not the ones with bad consequences. Was it only a year ago that it was observed that the party of 'Family Values' was seriously considering a slate of would-be presidential candidates men with abominable track records on marriage - save for the one Mormon?
The difference between honor and reputation is what you know about yourself versus what the public believes, to paraphrase Bujold. More than one person in public life has been burned by the friction between those two. Understanding that, and managing it has always been an important element of politics. If Edwards political career is now over and done with, if the policies he advocated are now off the table, then how does happen that there is no corresponding problem on the other side of the political divide?
If consistency is a virtue, John McCain's own track record should have driven him from public life long ago. Indeed, by the same token Republican ideology should have been thoroughly discredited by now given the results that should be obvious to all. And yet, Republicans have managed to keep getting elected while Democrats are perennially on the defensive about their persons and their programs. I noted in the intro to this diary that it's as much about culture as character; the voters who support Republicans and the voters who support Democrats may all be Americans - but there are important cultural differences between them, and not just the cartoon version the GOP has been exploiting.
I'm indebted to Sara Robinson for bringing to my attention a book that illuminates much about the contradictions in American politics, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, by David Hackett Fischer. I have yet to actually get a copy, but material she's drawn from it (some buried in the archives at Orcinus, some more recently at Our Future) make it look like a must read.
How you feel about Edwards, McCain, Bush, Obama, Clinton, etc. may reflect political traditions Fischer traces back to the arrival of 4 different groups from England. Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers, and Borderers (AKA Scots-Irish). They each had their own distinctive matrix of values whose interplay shapes our politics today. Robinson's most recent writing on this looks at how the Obama campaign is responding to the McCain campaign, and why the response is coming from the group advising him - and so many other recent Democratic losers - is just not effective. I'm going to grab one large description of the four groups out of Robinson's commentary, but I strongly advise reading the entire piece, and getting Fischer's book.
To quickly summarize, the first of these groups were the Puritans, the bulk of whom arrived in New England between 1630 and1650. They were Reform Protestants who brought with them a notion of "ordered liberty." They believed that government authority, including the right to use force, properly belongs not to individuals, but to communities; and that individuals would necessarily need to conform their will to that of the larger whole for society to succeed. In the generations that followed, their descendants spread Puritan culture across the northern tier of the county, into the Pacific Northwest, and down the West Coast to northern California. These are, today, still the most liberal parts of the country.
They were followed, starting in 1660s, by Cavaliers -- Anglican royalists from the south of England who took refuge from the English Civil War by settling up the Chesapeake and the coastal south. They believed that liberty and authority rightly accompany tradition, wealth, and inherited social status; and that government had no right to infringe on the God-given absolute "freedom" of the highest-ranking people to order the lives of those under their authority. If you're poor, you don't deserve freedom. If you're rich, you have a sacred right to do whatever you see fit to whomever you please. The lowland South is still dominated by traditional, hierarchy-oriented Cavalier values, from tidewater Virginia all the way around to New Orleans, and remains one of the most conservative parts of the country.
In the 1670s, the Quakers began arriving from England's industrial midlands. They were working class and middle class, earnest, hardworking, and nonviolent. The most productive and successful of all the British immigrant groups, they introduced the ideas of tolerance and racial and gender equality to the American conversation. For them, people were entitled to freedom to the degree that they were willing to grant the same freedoms to others -- a perspective that gave them a very expansive view of human rights. They valued a rough-and-tumble party politics that engaged everyone in political debate to solve problems. Their ancestors (most of whom eventually converted, and became Methodists or Baptists) spread out across the Midwest, where the plain-spoken, plain-living, deeply egalitarian Quaker way still flavors the culture.
And, finally, in the early 1700s, the Borderers (more commonly known as the Scots-Irish) started arriving from the borderlands of northern England, lowland Scotland, and northern Ireland. The area they came from had been a constant war zone between English and Scottish kings for some 700 years; and the never-ending violence had made them clannish, tough, fiercely independent, contemptuous of all forms of authority, and firm believers in a vision of "natural liberty" -- including the God-given rights of man that were eventually enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Philadelphia Quakers and Charleston Cavaliers took one look at this unruly, self-sufficient warrior society, shuddered, and immediately shipped them far off to their own highland frontiers. When we speak of "pioneer stock," we're talking about the Borderers. Their wandering descendants spread out and settled up the roughest places of the south, west and southwest, and gave us cowboys and country music along the way. Wherever you find populists and libertarians, you're likely among Borderers.
emphasis added
A caveat: I am NOT saying that the above is the complete and final grand unified theory of American politics - but it IS IMHO a useful thesis to keep in mind when trying to understand where politicians are coming from, who their supporters are, and why some political strategies succeed while others fail. Your response to Edwards, the Democratic Party, and the politics of the day may well be rooted in the assumptions of one of these groups. Understanding that can give some insight into how others react, and the most effective ways to deal with them. If you look at the differences between the four groups above, it's easy to see how their views - and the conflicts/synergies between them - have shaped America.
Understanding that helps place Edwards in perspective, and why the leaders of the Left versus the leaders of the Right are subjected to such very different standards of accountability. In the ongoing battle between the Right and the Left, it helps to understand the terrain.
LAGNIAPPE: For a very different take on the differences between Left and Right, Sara Robinson linked to a classic 2005 commentary by Doug Muder entitled Red Family, Blue Family.
For some perspective on this whole marriage thing, there's an interview in Salon today by Katharine Mieszkowski of Susan Squire blurbed:
Happily never after
Sex gets boring, eyes wander, but according to the author of "I Don't," knowing the history of marriage can help save yours.
It's Eurocentric and somewhat parochial, but it does present some ideas about this whole concept of marriage thing that's a bit deeper than the breathless moralizing and voyeurism going on in the traditional media at the moment. Definitely read the comments to see where it falls short - and how much more complex the matter is.