Edwards, Pants on Fire

The dissimulation of John Edwards
The former Democratic senator joins Gary Hart and Bill Clinton in the despised National Enquirer's hall of shame
All comments (54)
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Saturday August 09 2008 01:23 BST

When I came to the US, I thought I was in journalist's heaven. Any serious revelations in the British press would be followed by lawyers' letters threatening writs and sometimes, for well-heeled litigants, actual libel writs to match. As several jurisdiction-miners have discovered, even telling the truth can on occasion be no defence in British courts. Hell, as recently as 1977 they even reinvented a centuries-old offence of "blasphemous libel," to convict a poet for writing about sex with a long-deceased Jesus Christ. But in the US, it was virtually impossible to libel even a live public figure!

But then I discovered that this was much less significant than I thought, since the US media is normally so deferential of politicians that one almost admires the National Enquirer – not least because it knows the difference between "inquire" and "enquire".

One can see why so many of the supermarket tabloid reporters were refugees from British media law, where a judge can rule a story about the former British fascist leader's son having S&M with prostitutes as an invasion of privacy. He did not deny the story as such – but simply said it was none of the press's business. Nor was it.

When British Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown and former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook were outed for having affairs with their secretaries, they fessed up and their popularity rose. But note the difference.

Unlike their British counterparts, the National Enquirer did not make stories up. When Gary Hart told them to bring it on: they did. When Bill Clinton denied Gennifer Flowers, they got him. And now John Edwards is admitting they got him as well. And they all dissimulated. Extra-marital sex may be one of the fringe benefits of political life, but getting caught in the lie outright could be fatal.

Even so, the hypocrisy of Democratic party leaders now working out how to keep Edwards off the podium at their convention does show double standards. They would certainly welcome former President Bill Clinton up there, whom the Enquirer also got bang to rights, as it were. Even more tellingly, when did Newt Gingrich ever lack for a platform in the party of family values and the religious right despite his trying to bully his wife into more favourable divorce terms in her cancer recovery ward?

John McCain himself divorced the wife who had stayed married to him during the years he spent in a Vietnamese prison, and married into the money that now helps bankroll his political ambitions. Rudy Giuliani, while mayor of New York, announced his divorce at a press conference without telling his wife beforehand. Neither of these men seems to have suffered politically within the party of the teenage abstinence, familial integrity and marital fidelity.

A senior UN official once asked another official why I had not carried a story about his affair with his secretary, since I knew about it. The accurate reply was I saw no public - that is, civic - interest. He was not committing any crime and had not made a public career of parading family values and feigned Pauline Christian morality. It was irresistible to gossip about in the bar of the Delegates' Lounge, but entirely resistible to write about it. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone", is the relevant text.

American law does not protect privacy, unlike European law, but it certainly has a point in excluding public figures from libel protection. On a pragmatic point, people who run for public office should be savvy enough to do the Caesar's wife thing. How can you expect someone who is indiscreet enough to get caught to run a superpower, with its necessary lies and secrets?

In addition, hypocrisy should always be the subject of journalists' attention. Lying and then getting caught out will always prolong the media attention. Take a tip from Rudy and Newt, be brazen in your hypocrisy, and even the religious right will forget about it in a very short time.