THE DAILY BLADE: John Edwards’ Unbridled Ego
Psychopaths and politicians share several personality traits, according to an analysis of data from the FBI's behavioral analysis unit by Jim Kouri, who is vice president of the National Assn. of Chiefs of Police. According to Kouri:
Interpersonal traits include glibness, superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, and the manipulation of others. The affective traits include a lack of remorse and/or guilt, shallow affect, a lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility. The lifestyle behaviors include stimulation-seeking behavior, impulsivity, irresponsibility, parasitic orientation, and a lack of realistic life goals. …
Ironically, these same traits exist in men and women who are drawn to high-profile and powerful positions in society including political officeholders.
Keeping this in mind, the portrait of John Edwards that emerges in this 8,000-word excerpt from “Game Change,” published in New York magazine is that of a man who was psychologically unfit for the presidency:
Unlike Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom wrestled for months with the question of whether to run in 2008, Edwards indulged in no to-ing or fro-ing. Before the dust had even settled on 2004, he was planning for four years hence. On the day he and Kerry conceded defeat, Edwards discovered that Elizabeth had breast cancer; a few days after that, he was on the phone with his pollster and close friend Harrison Hickman, gaming out the campaign ahead. …
Over and over, he proclaimed to his aides, “I am going to be the next president of the United States.”
Some of Edwards’s advisers dismissed his outsize confidence as pro forma, but others took it as a sign of something deeper - a burgeoning megalomania. …
Many of his friends started noticing a change - the arrival of what one of his aides referred to as “the ego monster” - after he was nearly chosen by Al Gore to be his running mate in 2000: the sudden interest in superficial stuff to which Edwards had been oblivious before, from the labels on his clothes to the size of his entourage. But the real transformation occurred in the 2004 race, and especially during the general election. Edwards reveled in being inside the bubble: the Secret Service, the chartered jet, the press pack, the swarm of factotums catering to his every whim. And the crowds! The ovations! The adoration! He ate it up. In the old days, when his aides asked how a rally had gone, he would roll his eyes and self-mockingly say, “Oh, they love me.” Now he would bound down from the stage beaming and exclaim, without the slightest shred of irony, “They looooove me!”
Once Edwards had been warm and considerate with his staffers; now he was disdainful, ignoring them, dismissing their ideas, demanding that they perform the most menial of tasks. …
As Edwards’s mistreatment of his staff and supporters got worse through 2005, aides interceded, trying to set him straight. “You can’t talk to people that way,” Hickman scolded him after one off-putting display. People are attracted to the nice John Edwards, and for a lot of them, you’re not that John Edwards anymore.
Edwards bridled at the criticism. “I don’t know where that’s coming from,” he snapped. “You have to consider the source … A lot of these people are hangers-on.”
Consider Kouri’s points again as you read this next bit about Edwards deciding to appear on "Nightline" after his affair with “videographer” Rielle Hunter became public and the National Enquirer published a photo of him holding their baby girl:
Edwards … was going to confess to the affair, but deny paternity of the child. He didn't want to jeopardize his chances of being Obama's attorney general, he said.
"That, John?" [press secretary Jennifer Palmieri] said in disbelief. "That was gone a long time ago."
Palmieri had been on the phone with the Obama campaign, which was sending the clear, if gentle, signal that there was no longer a slot available for Edwards to speak at the convention. "You have to call Obama right now" and back out, Palmieri said.
"I don't want to give up on that yet," Edwards insisted.
Here’s how psychologist Steven Berglas assessed Edwards after his performance on “Nightline”:
I fear that he is going to be psychologically devastated if he thinks that after last Friday’s “performance” he is on the road to redemption. …
People like Edwards, who as far back as they can remember, enjoyed continual success, respond horridly to career failure and the knowledge that they cannot be considered “a success” again unless, or until, they replicate or exceed past performance levels. When he left the U.S. Senate to run for VP with Al Gore in 2004, and recently in a failed campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Edwards tasted failure. …
Edwards had a need to re-assert his power and his masculinity (via an affair) because of his history of believing that his entire self-worth derived from success. …
For men who, almost literally, become addicted to the external accoutrements of success, there is one and only one cure: Subordinating their ego to family (or a community) OR religion [emphasis in the original]. There are no other known substitutes for the highs obtained from adulation, material wealth, and interpersonal power.
And as Berglas predicted, when all was said and done, “[i]solated, scorned, turned into a national punch line, Edwards slipped into a dark place. His weight plummeted. His countenance turned sickly. Some of his former aides began to fear that he might kill himself,” John Heilmann and Mark Halperin write.
Just think: If John Kerry had beaten George Bush in 2004 and been re-elected in 2008 – I know, I know, but humor me; it’s just a thought experiment - Edwards would now be planning his presidential bid without having to worry about beating Clinton or Obama in the primaries. This psychopol could have become president in 2012. Hey … didn’t the Mayans predict something like this?
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