According to Steve Hayward on the Ashbrook Center blog, “No Left Turns” here.
For a long time I toyed with the idea of writing a small book
reflecting on the soul-warping megalomania that is required to run for
president and other high offices. Ambition is not enough; you need to
think very well of yourself indeed to feel you are the person
best fit to lead the nation and the world. Then I discovered Jeremy
Paxman’s terrific book, The Political Animal,
that does the job of describing the preternatural weirdness of
politicians. I highly recommend it as a great read, offering a lot of
insight about familiar traits.I’m not sure Paxman
or any other single book can help us discern very well when ambition
and egomania elide into a megalomania so egregious that it makes you
want to throw up. Case in point: John Edwards. While Harry Reid’s
moronic comments about Obama’s skin tone and dialect are getting all
the attention from the forthcoming John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
book Game Change, the long excerpt from the book published this week in New York magazine
about John Edwards doesn’t just make you cringe and rejoice that we
dodged a potential disaster. It makes clear that Edwards and his even
more despicable wife were completely unfit to serve in the high station
they sought. And yet the media and many liberal elites took this total
fraud of a human being seriously. It’s a long excerpt, and I’d
normally include a two-cup-of-coffee recommendation, except that it
would put your keyboard at risk from the numerous snort-worthy
revelations in the piece. Kudos to Heilemann and Halperin for terrific
reporting. Where was the rest of the media on this? Why did they
cover for this guy?
