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Edwards a Warning on Celebrity Pols

Fame has replaced achievement and the judgment of peers

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Jan 26, 2010 5:00 AM CST

(Newser) – John Edwards nearly rode a megawatt grin into the Oval Office, and there's a lesson in the wreckage of his political career, writes Richard Cohen. Edwards became the vice presidential nominee because of his "political matinee idol" style, rather than legislative achievement. His rise—along with that of Sarah Palin and even Barack Obama—should make people stop and ask how much they really know about politicians who rise from nowhere to rock-star status, Cohen writes in the Washington Post.

Scott Brown could be the next to go from GMC pickup to his own campaign plane overnight, Cohen writes. Celebrity status has now replaced accomplishment, and the political machines that once filtered candidates have been "replaced by a sham familiarity—fame at its most beguiling and dangerous," Cohen writes. "This was John Edwards. He's not a scandal. He's a lesson."

[Images (2)]

[Quotes (3)]

John Edwards talks with his running mate, John Kerry, before their concession speeches in Boston's Faneuil Hall, Nov. 3, 2004. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

In this Dec. 27, 2006 photo, former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, with videographer Rielle Hunter in the 9th Ward of New Orleans, La. (AP Photo/The National Enquirer)

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The story has been both appalling and titillating, but the tabloid nature of it should not obscure its larger lesson: John Edwards could have become president. - Richard Cohen

It is characteristic of our times that the moment Scott Brown won the special election for Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat, he was asked about presidential ambitions.
- Richard Cohen

The better we got to know Palin, the more egregious a choice she became: astonishingly unprepared and unsuited for the presidency. She proves, if anything, that McCain was, too. But what, then, can we make of Kerry's choice of Edwards? - RIchard Cohen

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Edwards a Warning on Celebrity Pols