KEY POINTS:
The American people should go down on their knees and thank Rielle Hunter, the woman with whom John Edwards, Democrat presidential candidate second only to Barack Obama, had an affair.
Indeed, since American politics - whether we like it or not - impacts on the world - we
should all be grateful to this woman who has exposed Edwards as a liar, hypocrite, narcissist, and, ultimately, misogynist.
Incredibly, despite the ridicule and opprobrium dumped on him in this last week, he is still unaware his days on the stage of national politics - any politics - are over.
I write this from New York City, where the Edwards affair has been given equal media coverage with the neck-and-neck Obama/McCain battle for the White House. Not that it's a scandal - Americans are used to, and weary of, philandering politicians who think they can get away with straying from the porch.
It's not as if Americans really care if their leaders have a "human" moment of weakness - look at the blind eyes turned to Roosevelt when he cheated on the beloved Eleanor before contracting polio, Eisenhower's rumoured liaison with his driver, and Kennedy's addiction to sex (JFK is said to have once told the then British Prime Minister, who was not amused, that he needed sex every four hours).
What the citizens in the Land of the Free cannot stand, and they share this with voters the world over, is hypocrisy.
At the same time Edwards was campaigning, via video, he wanted to preside over a "moral, honest, just America", he was having sex with the woman on the other side of the camera. She now has a baby - not his but his aide's, he says.
And anyway, he only cheated on Elizabeth when her cancer was in remission.
Now she's dying of the disease, the former senator from North Carolina has returned to her side and wants to carry on his political career because, he says, his wife and his Lord have forgiven him.
It's taken the "respectable" newspapers months to pick up on Edwards' vainglorious behaviour. Broken first by the National Enquirer, it was ignored by the "mainstream media" until they finally conceded the tabloid was on to something.
Edwards confessed, then appeared on ABC (the night of the Olympics opening) to bare his soul. Next day, everyone wished he hadn't.
Edwards' excuses? He wasn't the first to do this - McCain had bad matrimonial moments, he claimed and, as mentioned, he only strayed when his wife's cancer was in remission, behaviour Sunday's New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in her inimitable way, described as "oncologically correct".
Edwards seems to be relishing his role as breast-beater and confessor, causing New York folk to cry, "enough already". He said he'd be saying nothing more on the matter, then called CBS' Bob Schieffer and pipped the exclusive he'd given ABC by going on CBS news. Schieffer had the sense to call Edwards' wife who, he told viewers, came to the phone in tears and said, "This is really, really, tough".
There was no need for Edwards to go down this route. He could have dropped quietly out of politics and gone back to caring for his wife and his law career. Instead he's addicted to the bitch goddess of fame, and the story will get worse.
No doubt Hunter's daughter will be stalked by some reporter trying to get a DNA sample (Edwards has said he's happy to take the paternity test).
It's just too cute, and callous, for Edwards to allow his former aide to claim paternity, and then be financed with his wife and family into a new house in California. Edwards also reckons his manager never told him about payments to Hunter.
Instead of demonising women such as Hunter, as Maureen Dowd started to do last week, calling her a "wacky former Gotham party girl" who appalled even Jay McInerney, they should be thanked.
Without them we'd never know the truth about dangerous egotists with personal mores along the lines of "do as I say, not as I do".
I just wish Edwards had beaten Obama. If the Republicans had been handed this delicious news in the middle of the presidential campaign, McCain would easily be seated in the Oval Office, and the prospects of free trade for our agricultural produce, and New Zealand's economy, would get a whole lot better.
Meanwhile, the role of women in politics takes on a whole new meaning.
