Wednesday, May 18, 2011

John Edwards and Arnold Schwarzenegger

Even by the standards of blogging, this post is a complete waste of time, but anyway.  Here's supposed Democrat and one-time candidate for US Senate from California Mickey Kaus explaining why it was so relevant to keep peddling those true stories about a John Edwards love-child --

4. Irresponsibility: How irresponsible was it to seek the party's nomination knowing that this scandal was lurking around, ready to explode? What if he'd won? Are we sure it wouldn't have been discovered by the McCain campaign before November? Rock stars get to behave this badly because they're only rock stars. Worst that happens is the band breaks up. What if Edwards actually got elected--and then the scandal was discovered when he was in office? Did Democrats enjoy the Lewinsky years?
5. The Coverup: If the scandal is true, it almost certainly means that during the campaign Edwards presided over an elaborate coverup involving at least a) having an aide wrongly claim paternity and b) having other aides go out and lie to reporters. It probably also included payments of money to cooperating parties and various familiar slurs on the character of the 'other woman,' Rielle Hunter.

Now here's Kaus explaining how great it is that we already know all the bad stuff about his one-time hero, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger --

In a perverse way, I think Schwarzenegger's character defects may even serve as a valuable protection against the dangers of his ascendancy. It's not just that he will be on his best behavior toward women, or that he will take special care not to come across as an authoritarian who disrespects the "little men" and "losers." It's that the defects in all their ugliness are now visible to everyone--they've done their damage, making it impossible for him to think about building the sort of cult of personality his Nuremberg-rally fantasies might otherwise tempt him to build. We know he's a pig. We're not going to love him. If he's going to keep our loyalty it will have to be by producing actual results: a slimmed down government, a balanced budget, better schools, a better business climate, etc.

Except now we know that Arnold was sitting on an Edwards-like secret all these years, one that he got away with while running for, and holding, office. That Edwards-era "irresponsibility" and "coverup" sounds like the kind of thing that might have kept the Governator from fulfilling the expectations that people like Kaus had him in. But not being a Democrat, there was a blind spot.

Remember Mickey when he said he'd balance the budget? He lied.

UPDATE: The current Kaus strategy is to claim that the Schwarzenegger revelation is old news, though that's not backed up when you follow his link.

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