Preening Edwards Worse Than a Ken Doll

The real John Edwards shocker was not so much his affair, but his admission of narcisissm—yet even that confession was oddly self-loving, writes Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. While "it isn’t like we didn’t know that the son of a millworker was a little enraptured by himself," and “certain men assume that power confers sexual privilege,” his self-absorbed confession that he felt “special” and “invincible” leads Dowd to rescind an earlier comparison of Edwards to a Ken doll as “not fair—to Ken.”

Why is it that “super-strivers,” such as Edwards, “have a need to sell what is secretly weakest about themselves”? Clinton the intellectual was stupid about Monica. Dubya plays the take-charge guy when he’s not running the show. And now Edwards, who called for “a moral, honest, just America,” cheated on his cancer-stricken wife. It was in remission, however—so at least his affair was “oncologically correct,” Dowd writes. (More John Edwards stories.)