Carolina Politics Online

John Edwards

There are jackasses. Then there are super-primo jackasses. Then there are those who do things that even jackasses find repulsive. It’s about right there, with the rest of the parasites living on the underbelly of jackassery, that you’ll find John Edwards, your choice for Carolina Politics Online’s 2008 Jackass of the Year.

Congratulations readers. You have made a fine choice indeed.

Some may accuse me of partisanship-inspired hyperbole, but I believe that John Edwards is such a truly loathsome human being that I can write until tomorrow and be unable to muster the words necessary to express just how much I detest this waste of protoplasm. It’s not simply that he has no redeeming value; it’s that on the whole, he’s a net negative to society. Because John Edwards exists, politics is a little more cynical, the legal profession is less noble, a doctor’s appointment costs a little more, and even sunsets lose a little bit of their splendor. Edwards just sucks the vibrancy and joy out of life like the overgrown tic he is. You, me, your family, and America are all worse off because of John Edwards.

There are so many reasons to detest this man, the hardest part about writing this is keeping it short while still explaining why he’s such a Jackass. I suppose we should start with the fact that because of John Edwards, expectant mothers across the United States have few doctors to help them and more costs to pay.

You see, Edwards made his name (and his fortune), suing obstetricians for causing Cerebral Palsy (CP) in the babies they were delivering. Edwards claimed that CP was caused by doctors waiting too long to perform C-sections. During his first big CP trial, he “channeled” the voice of a young CP victim during his closing argument. “She speaks through me”, he told the jury, who may have confused him with John Edward, that TV guy who talks to dead people and fellow nominee for Biggest Douche in the Universe. The channeling must have worked, because despite having no actual proof that the doctors did anything wrong, the jury found in his favor and awarded his clients $6.5 million.

The only problem with this is that it was all bullsh-t. Thanks to Edwards and other tics with law degrees, many obstetricians decided to cover their butts practicing “defensive medicine”- including ordering C-sections when they weren’t needed to ensure they wouldn’t get sued for not ordering one. Well, despite the resulting rise in the number of C-sections, the CP rate remained the same. There are no medical correlations between C-sections and CP. But John Edwards will never tell that to a jury he’s trying to snooker.

Today, 76% of all obstetricians have been sued for something, and fewer med students are going into that field because they don’t want to end up as the ‘X’ on some trial lawyer’s treasure map. Now expectant mothers have fewer options for medical help. More expensive ones too. In addition to ordering needless “defensive medicine” procedures, obstetricians and other doctors suffer from skyrocketing malpractice insurance costs precisely because of slimebags like Edwards. Those costs are passed on to you through higher bills and more expensive health insurance. Then Edwards has the temerity to turn around and decry the cost of health insurance in this country. What a jackass.

In all of Edwards’ political runs, trial lawyers like himself constituted a large portion of his fundraising. He and his parasite friends have been a major roadblock to health care and lawsuit reform. To them, a courtroom is a bank and a jury box is just an ATM.

After an undistinguished six years in the U.S. Senate, Edwards decided not to run for re-election (because he’d lose), and instead decided to run for President in 2004. He lost the primary, but ingratiated himself onto the ticket as John Kerry’s running-mate. In that capacity he treated us to two of the most abhorrent spectacles in modern American history. The first was during the Vice Presidential debate, when he “outed” Dick Cheney’s daughter in a shameful display of smarmy ooziness. The second was when Christopher Reeve died in the course of the campaign, and Edwards took the opportunity to tell America that when John Kerry was president, “people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again!”

Political commentator Charles Krauthammer, who actually uses a wheelchair, was not impressed. “In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery” he said. “There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.” Or win jury verdicts.

In between his presidential runs in 2004 and 2008, he found time to wax poetic about there being “Two Americas: one for the rich, and one for everyone else”. He then bought a $6 million house (with all his lawyering money), the biggest in Orange County, to emphasize the point. Edwards’ house is over 28,000 sq. feet; his neighbor’s homes are considerably smaller and, in the words of his wife, ”slummy”.

Also, one can’t go around the country decrying “Two Americas” with split ends, so Edwards is also a connoisseur of $400 haircuts. Hope you like his manly ‘do; you probably paid for it with that increase in your health insurance.

Oh yeah, and this year we learned that while his wife was recovering from breast cancer, Edwards started an affair that ended in 2006, just in time for another presidential run. Let me say that again: John Edwards cheated on his wife with another woman while his wife, the mother of his children, was recovering from cancer. His 2008 campaign collapsed in January (not before hiring two hateful anti-Christian bloggers and using homeless veterans as a campaign prop) but he made big news in July after the National Enquirer published a story alleging that Edwards had been carrying on an affair that had produced a love child… while his wife recovered from cancer. Edwards denied it, but it came to head one night in a Los Angeles hotel when an Enquirer reporter trapped Edwards in a bathroom while he was visiting his pootang and her child.

Caught in the act, this loathsome lying charlatan crawled onto national TV one night to genuflect himself before the two Americas he couldn’t give a rip about. But by then it was too late. What sort of a man, you ask yourself, cheats on his wife while she’s recovering from cancer? The same sort of man, I answer, who peddles junk science to juries, gets rich off doctors, says anything to get elected, spouts drivel about “Two Americas” while living in a $6 million house, and thinks there’s nothing wrong with a $400 haircut.

Most Americans, thankfully, have finally seen what myself and many others have seen plainly for quite some time. That Edwards is a phony, lying, egotistical hack with a $400 haircut, a 10-cent brain, and a hole where is soul ought to be. What’s truly sad, and a little frightening, is that it took his complete unraveling for everyone else to see what had been for so long infuriatingly obvious.

Michael Barone, a walking encyclopedia of politics and no partisan hack, wrote a political obituary for Edwards shortly after he admitted the affair:

Edwards has long struck me as a phony through and through (more than any other presidential candidate this cycle), and I have found his riff on poverty profoundly unimpressive. His command of issues and his knowledge of history and our society have seemed exceedingly thin; say what you want about Bill Clinton’s character, he has a strong intellect and wide-ranging knowledge, fine political judgment, and the capacity to learn from his mistakes. Edwards has demonstrated none of these things.

Well said. The only thing he forgot to mention was how big a Jackass Edwards happened to be. The biggest Jackass of 2008, in fact.

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