Who could have seen this coming?

Oy, vey.

From ABC News:

With John Edwards' electrifying U.S. Senate win in 1998, it was his wife Elizabeth Edwards who captivated the nation. A strong, smart, resilient woman, she became one of her husband's greatest political strengths.

[snip]

But behind their public persona as the golden couple, during his second run for president, there was another side to Elizabeth Edwards who was secretly dealing with the slow leakage of her husband's affair and her cancer diagnosis.

As a torrent of fresh details from the scandal cascaded into the media today, a source close to Elizabeth Edwards told ABC News that she and John are now legally separated. Under North Carolina law they can't get divorced until at least a year later. John Edwards is no longer living at their home in Chapel Hill, ABC News has learned.

I am going to give you a Moment of Truth. My friends, I may not be the very smartest political thinker of all time. All kidding aside, I am unironically embarrassed to admit that I once supported John Edwards as a national political figure. I was glad to hear a candidate for the Oval Office discussing the genuine problem of poverty in this nation, and its impact on the lives of poor Americans. True, after I heard his "Two Americas" speech one too many times, I began to question whether or not he actually had anything else to say, or was capable of varying his stump speech even a little (answers would have to be "no" and "no," I'm guessing), but I found him charismatic and appealing. I was even willing to forgive his making his millions as an ambulance chaser, given his supposed change of heart following the death of his son.

It wasn't until a couple of good friends from medical school told me about the tactics he had used to sue a hospital where they had both worked (neither was in any way connected to the case) that I began to question the quality of his character. As time has gone by, I think we can all agree that the country dodged a bullet with a very expensive haircut over the last two presidential election cycles.

In other words, I was wrong. Plain old wrong. [Confidential to GJ -- I would be grateful if you would pass up this obvious opportunity to suggest that I am similarly misguided in still supporting our current President. Thanks in advance.] Kind of painful to admit, that.

I like to criticize John McCain for foisting Sarah Palin on us. (I think he deserves it, frankly, because I still think Alaska's erstwhile governor is somewhere between "God awful" and "the pits" as far as political figures go.) But I think it's only fair to turn our eyes to John Kerry and give him similarly poor marks for making a similarly awful choice in running mate. While I still think the last four years of the Bush administration were wretched (in other words, remarkably similar to the first four years), the fact that John Edwards didn't come within spitting distance of the White House gives the 2004 election a wee, thin silver lining.