Michael Wolff has a most interesting piece up today on Newser:
Barack Obama is an uplifting but, so far, ultimately boring story.
The greatest political saga, the one that has it all, that gets to the real heart of American politics, is the John Edwards story. . . .
The problem here, let me argue, is not John Edwards, but our inability to see politicians for who they are.
We reduce these guys to stick figures, either to boring, righteous leading citizens, or incorrigible grotesques. We’re not interested in the former, and not allowed to be interested, except as witnesses to a train wreck, in the latter. Hence, we can never really understand the nature of politics, because we’re not allowed to know the people who have, for strange and heroic and horrifying and, no doubt, emotionally unsound reasons, committed their lives to this business.
The John Edwards story, as it helplessly and haplessly unfolds and keeps unfolding, is a remarkable window, which we ought to look into with the greatest curiosity and awe. Edwards isn’t, I doubt, much of an aberration. He is the American politician. The only difference is that circumstances now find him beyond spin, truer, and more naked than perhaps any American politician has ever been.
I’ll have to think about that; I think Wolff is on to something there. In the meantime, go read the whole post.