The flash in the pan

With all the excitement of the 2008 election campaign peaking today and Tuesday, and Republican hopes for a huge get-out-the-vote effort to counter the prospect of a Democratic sweep of major offices in North Carolina, something's missing from this campaign: John Edwards, the form-out-of-nowhere candidate whose 10 years in N.C. politics reflected both a meteoric rise and catastrophic fall in state politics. My colleague at the N&O Rob Christensen mentioned the Edwards phenomenon the other day in a column, and his case is an example of how briefly even a bright flash in the pan can shine. Edwards, Christensen thought, might have made Chapel Hill the site of the Southern White House before it all blew up.

Edwards was a political unknown prior to the 1998 Senate race, when he was a fairly well-known trial lawyer who hadn't bothered to even vote in a lot of campaigns. But he knocked off U.S. Sen. Lauch Faircloth, R-N.C., who had long been a staple of N.C. politics as both a Democrat and later a Republican. Before his first two years in the Senate were up, Edwards was already being talked about for the presidential ticket. He was briefly considered for Al Gore's running mate in 2000 and was John Kerry's running mate in 2004.
He was running for the top post in 2007 when rumors began to circulate about an affair with a campaign worker -- hotly denied by those around him. Edward's campaign rumbled to a halt earlier this year when it became apparent that the Democratic primary race was between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Edwards endorsed Obama, but there still was talk of a bright future for Edwards in Washington -- perhaps a Cabinet post. Attorney General? Secretary of Labor? All that talk stopped when Edwards admitted during the summer that he had indeed had an affair in 2006 with a former campaign staffer -- an admission that looked all that much worse because of his wife Elizabeth Edwards' struggle with cancer.
Edward's decade in the political limelight is tailor-made for the plot of a steamy political novel. But it's hard to see an opportunity for a political comeback, even in fiction.