“You Are So Hot!”
Elizabeth Edwards, an attorney, and John Edwards, a U.S. Senator, were living the American dream. “I married my law school sweetheart, John, on a hot summer day in North Carolina, and we walked through life in a carefree way,” Elizabeth observed.
We really did have the two children, a picturesque two-story white frame house, the golden retriever, and the station wagon. My husband made a name for himself as a lawyer; I slipped back into a hybrid life of being the lawyer I was supposed to be and the mother I needed to be. . . . It seemed that whatever we had done, we had done right. (Edwards, 2010, pp. 16–17)
But they also knew heartbreak. Their son died in a car accident, and Elizabeth was diagnosed with breast cancer.
After writing a best-selling memoir about these tragedies, Elizabeth became an admired adviser on John’s 2008 presidential campaign (Figure 11.1). Early in the campaign, John met videographer Rielle Hunter. Hunter’s flirtatious greeting—“You are so hot!”—prompted John to invite her to his hotel room, where, she would later recount:
FIGURE 11.1 Destination White House—or dog house? Attorney Elizabeth Edwards and Senator John Edwards (left) were a formidable team in his quest to become U.S. president in 2008. But his affair with Rielle Hunter (right) changed the course of their marriage and his political career.
He was the most charismatic man I had ever met [and] he eventually persuaded me to join him on the bed, where we sat and talked. . . . Somewhere in the midst of our talk, long after I realized how far off the rails his marriage was, and for how long it had been that way, something happened between us. . . . My heart clicked and I surrendered. . . . There was a lot of talk, a lot of laughter, and zero sleep. (Hunter, 2012, pp. 11–12)
Hunter was hired to provide behind-the-scenes video coverage of John on the campaign trail, and they traveled together extensively. Tabloids published rumors of their affair, but John quickly dismissed them in a widely broadcast interview:
It’s completely untrue, ridiculous. I’ve been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years, and as anybody who’s been around us knows, she’s an extraordinary human being, warm, loving, beautiful, sexy, and as good a person as I have ever known. So the story’s just false.
The story was not false. John had privately disclosed the affair to Elizabeth shortly after it happened, but apparently described it as a one-night stand rather than as the ongoing relationship it had become. However, Hunter became pregnant and gave birth to a girl, putting pressure on John to admit to the affair in a nationally televised interview. He implied he had terminated contact with Hunter, and denied being the baby’s father—a denial that also would prove false. John attributed his indiscretions to egotism and narcissism, and when asked whether his marriage would survive, he confidently responded “Oh yeah, oh yeah. I think our marriage will not only survive but will be strong.”
Elizabeth would later initiate divorce proceedings after John admitted to being the father of Hunter’s child. Elizabeth wrote:
We had, I believed, a great love story, bound as we were by triumph and defeat, by exhilarating achievement and shattering grief. We had walked side by side for three decades and in my foolish dreams would walk side by side, hand in hand, for three more. But even if my illness somehow allows me those days, they will by necessity be different because, at the very least, I am a different person now. I was not wounded, not afraid, not uncertain before, and now I always will be. (Edwards, 2010, p. 37)
Those days turned out to be few in number, as Elizabeth died from breast cancer months later. John and Rielle ended their relationship, and John left politics to practice law.