Jonathan Darman tries to explain in the latest Newsweek why he avoided writing about John Edwards’ groupie for two years, even though he knew her relatively well.
One particular passage struck me as interesting:
Her latest project was John Edwards. Edwards, she said, was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential. The real John Edwards, she believed, was a brilliant, generous, giving man who was driven by competing impulses ? to feed his ego and serve the world. If he could only tap into his heart more, and use his head less, he had the power to be a “transformational leader” on par with Gandhi and Martin Luther King. “He has the power to change the world,” she said.
It’s not the grandiose comparisons that drew my attention. They’re not necessarily inconsistent with other off-the-wall statements Darman attributes to Rielle Hunter.
What I find more interesting is that a flaky woman infatuated and starstruck by John Edwards could still tell that he was egotistic and that he based most of his life on political calculations (“his head”) rather than core beliefs (“his heart”).
