Last Tuesday, John Edwards spoke here at Brown University. It was his third public appearance since the Reille Hunter story broke – the first time he took unscreened questions from the audience.
I just couldn’t NOT ask J. Eddy about the way his campaign went up in flames! In my defense, I wasn’t trying to air out anyone’s dirty laundry. I wanted to take an academic approach to what had happened. At least it would break the silence on the issue – nobody in the audience (or the media, over the course of the past 6 months, for that matter) would address the huge, blonde, video-recording elephant in the room! As a student of media and politics, I felt I had the right to ask what the candidate himself thought about the public’s relationship with the media on issues like this.
I went up to the mic and said this:
“I just want to first identify myself as someone who was organizing for you here on campus. And I did go knock on doors for you in New Hampshire.
As someone who believed in you, I wanted to afford you the opportunity to speak on something that I think Joe Trippi, your former campaign manager, explains pretty well toward the end of his book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. In there, he says something about the American public judging candidates on a higher moral standard than we would judge normal people in our daily lives. And I’m wondering if you would say that this is a fair metric, if this is a just metric that we, the American public — with the help of the mainstream media, of course — should hold our public officials to? Even at our own detriment, when we lose out on a candidate’s good policies because he or she may not be able to run for public office again.”
You should have heard the way that auditorium went deathly quiet at the word “moral,” it was like some one had been shot. After I finished the question there was a collective holding-of-breath as everyone’s attention shifted to the podium.
Needless to say, Edwards gave a politicians non-answer answer, saying that he’s no one to say what’s just or fair and that he’ll keep his private beliefs on the matter to himself. Not fantastic. Not even satisfactory. But I figured that pushing him on the matter would only backfire and make me look like a complete grouch.
I find it really interesting how the media took my question and ran with it (see links below.) I was portrayed in a variety of ways: as the bitter former campaign volunteer demanding an apology, the holier-than-thou Ms. Prim scolding the sinner who lost his way, or my personal favorite: the naive college student that learned a tough life lesson about politics. In reality, these are all caricatures. Believe it or not, I’m actually very interested in media, politics and the bizarre nature of the collective American psyche.
While yes, my question reflects my longing for an upfront acknowledgment from John Edwards about what happened, I’m also curious whether he thought we, the Ameican public, do ourselves harm or good for tossing out candidates based on their sex lives. If JFK were campaigning today, would he have made it to the White House without the media exposing his extra-exciting social life? Doubtful.
Unfortunately, this isn’t really the dialogue that was carried through by the media.
The ProJo put out two pieces on the incident:
Form presidential candidate John Edwards speaks at Brown
Scandal over affair with his campaign worker clouds Edwards’ poverty message
I was also interviewed for a story on The Daily Beast, but judging by the comments left underneath the story by dailybeast.com readers, I think my message was misconstrued. I was a HUGE John Edwards supporter – and still am! I was just disappointed! You can read it here:
John Edwards Ducks Reille Hunter
What I was not so thrilled about was the way the right wing used my question as fodder for hate-on-John-Edwards pieces. I’m not sure whether I was happy or concerned to learn that Economist.com took some of what I said to the Daily Beast reporter and used it as their “quote of the day.”
March 11, 2009 Quote of the Day