Flippin’ the Word

News of John Edwards’ affair has the entire commentariat proclaiming the death of his political career, the inanity of which was best demonstrated by Edwards’ reply that he isn’t sure he ever had a place in future politics at all. I’d go one step further to say that he didn’t have much of a past political career either - just a sporadic, hyped-up presence easily deflated by a curious lack of gravitas.

Seriously, it seems like Edwards’ political imprint is best remembered as profoundly disappointing. He’s bobbed in and out of the political sphere, emerging in the throes of a big election and then retreating until the next one. The declaration that this affair has finished him glosses over the disappointment that has defined his career. The fact is that Edwards’ never had much of a political career, and any semblance of one was overshadowed by the reality of his hype.

Until now.

For the first time in a long time, Edwards’ political stock is on the rise. While certainly counterintuitive, the truth is that Edwards - with his careful coif and earnest empathy  - stands to benefit from an infusion of bad-boy.

That’s because women are born gluttons for punishment, in love-hate with the heartbreakers. Edwards’ infidelity has handed him what he’s been lacking all along: That boy-from-the-mill image that he’s flailed to cultivate is now kind of believeable, his wrong-side-of-the-tracks image buoyed by the female penchant for just that.

And, naturally, there is a distinct measure of sexuality that factors in too. Every woman occasionally fancies herself a homewrecker. Dating back all the way to Eve, it’s empowering to think that we can seduce - even if we never actually would. And the seduction is sweeter when its subject is righteous - like Edwards - because there is nothing more raw to a woman than being that irresistible. We’re all Jezebels, at least in our fantasies, and Edwards, with his Tom Cruise-esque appeal, is the perfect canvas on which to project our homewrecking illusions.

And this effect is only heightened in a political environment that’s all about women, like the kind we’re in now. Ostensibly it is feminism that fuels current politics, though that is a sentiment that is at once naive and cynical - naive in that it presumes that women vote for the politics and not the politician; cynical in that it presumes that women’s and men’s politics are at odds. Like always, it will be feminine - not feminist - values with which women vote.

To have an affair was probably the shrewdest political move Edwards ever made. Sure the reaction is icy and indignant - but just superficially. After the dust has settled, Edwards’ indiscretion has the potential to propel him - finally - into political success, Elizabeth beside him as the couple enters the world from which its long been sidelined.