The Politician

by Young, Andrew

  Andrew, it’s Fred. I just want to give you a heads-up on something. I’m gonna be meeting with the principal tomorrow, but they want you to know that he is not taking your calls or her calls right now because of his circumstance, uh, with EE [Elizabeth Edwards] and not to take it personally, but it will get better soon. But right now he is in a bad place . . . When you get settled out there, give me a buzz.

  By calling the senator “the principal” and referring to Rielle as “her,” Fred Baron displayed a little of the lawyer’s impulse to assure himself plausible deniability. He may have spoken this way out of habit or because he worried about future legal problems. To me it just sounded strange, as if Fred were backing away emotionally. This turned out to be true. As Fred later told me, in the weeks after the New Hampshire primary the Clintons put extra pressure on him to abandon Senator Edwards and get him and the nation’s trial lawyers behind Hillary’s campaign.

  Fred’s account squared with comments I heard from the senator, who was worried about losing his support. He had talked to me about how Fred’s cash would be only “our short-term solution.” Edwards believed this because he thought Fred would soon shift his interest to another candidate. He also knew that Fred had been diagnosed with cancer and, like Mrs. Edwards, might not be around for very long. With this in mind, he said that Bunny Mellon was more likely to provide “the long-term solution” to his need to fund both Rielle’s lifestyle and an organization to keep the Edwards name in front of the public after the election. (Bunny’s support would also keep me employed.) He was confident about Bunny’s loyalty because he had been building a relationship with her. She was so fond of him that she had given him one of her gold necklaces to carry as a good-luck charm.

  Despite the concerns the senator expressed, in the winter of 2007–2008, Fred Baron’s short-term support was unwavering. He spent time on the phone with Rielle when she needed comforting and enlisted his wife, Lisa Blue, to do the same. Fred also said that money was “no object” and told me to spend whatever it took to placate Rielle and Cheri, and he would pay the bills. But because Mrs. Edwards’s condition was not as dire as the senator had told us, this was beginning to look like a long-term project. Believing Fred would eventually stop writing checks, we set aside the money Bunny had sent for future use. As the senator kept saying, “Fred’s the short-term solution and Bunny is the long-term solution.”

  On January 10, we boarded Fred’s jet to leave Aspen for good and landed in Santa Barbara to start house hunting. Encouraged by Fred to “make everyone comfortable,” I checked everyone into the Biltmore Four Seasons at Butterfly Beach. Although Rielle was disappointed that we couldn’t get suites at the exclusive Bacara Resort & Spa, the Biltmore was a luxurious five-star place. Built in Spanish colonial style with red tile roofs and bubbling fountains, the hotel offered attentive service from the moment you arrived and were greeted by bellmen wearing argyle sweaters. Rielle had to inspect three different rooms and request upgrades, but to her credit, we wound up with blissfully quiet accommodations overlooking the croquet green. When the kids ran to look at the ocean, they saw a pod of dolphins jumping in the water about a quarter mile from the beach.

  The main task I had to accomplish in Santa Barbara was finding a home where Rielle could wait out the end of her pregnancy and raise her baby through the first few months of life. Cheri flew home for a couple of days to clean Eric Montross’s house (and take down the Christmas tree there) so he could put it back on the market. When she got there, she discovered reporters had left about a dozen notes and business cards slipped under the front door.

  In Santa Barbara, Rielle and I met real-estate agents, who were told that she was my “stepsister,” and we scoured rental listings on the Internet. I found several nice houses in the $5,000 to $10,000 (per month) range and was sure I had discovered the perfect spot when I stumbled upon a mountaintop home owned by Herb Peterson, who had invented the Egg McMuffin for McDonald’s. Mr. Peterson, who was going into a nursing home, offered me a Heineken, and we shared his last beer in that house while Rielle looked around and decided it did not have the right karma.

  The winner in what became a dream house contest was a huge, single-level home in the gated Montecito neighborhood of Ennisbrook. Adjacent to Oprah Winfrey’s estate (where Barack Obama had recently held a fund-raiser) and hidden behind its own secondary gate, the hacienda-style home had nine-foot-high steel-and-glass entry doors, a great room with a grand piano and a view of the ocean and mountains, and a library with a fifteen-foot ceiling. The layout of the place, which offered separate wings for our family and Rielle, provided a measure of privacy for all of us. The final stamp of approval came from Bob McGovern, whom I met for the first time when he arrived in his BMW 740i to perform a blessing, which Rielle said would “clear the energy” of the place.

  Roughly six feet two and well over two hundred pounds, Bob was not at all what I expected. A few years past sixty, he had bushy hair that was silvery gray and a big belly that made him look like Captain Kangaroo. His voice was extremely measured and soothing, and his smile seemed genuine. I didn’t go inside to watch him do his thing, but whatever it was, it made Rielle happy and calm, and I appreciated his effect on her.

  When Cheri got back, we all moved in. We had gone to great lengths to hide from the press and the public, so we couldn’t risk enrolling the kids in school. Instead, we found a teacher who would come to homeschool the kids and establish a routine for them. Ennisbrook isn’t exactly teeming with kids, so I regularly took them to the park and the local YMCA, where they met lots of playmates, and I let them run on the beach as much as possible.

  Because Rielle was late in her pregnancy and her picture was in the Enquirer and all over the Internet, she stayed home most of the time. She spoke often with Senator Edwards and told us that it didn’t matter that he was losing his bid for the nomination. “The universe” had other things in store for him, she said, including a life with her and a new baby.

  When I spoke with him, the senator grumbled about John Kerry—“that asshole”—endorsing Barack Obama and speculated about how he could parlay his own endorsement into a position for himself. Cheri and I fell into a routine of taking care of Rielle’s basic needs almost as if she were our child. When we cooked meals she was included, and when we went to the store we bought her supplies along with ours. As an expression of rebellion, I ran these errands while listening to Hank Williams cranked up loud on the stereo in my redneck Jeep, which I had had shipped out from North Carolina. I waved to our neighbors, who drove Bentleys and Aston Martins, and I didn’t care that they never waved back. Once, as I pulled up to the front gate of the development, the guard looked at my four days’ growth of beard and my Jeep, and when I said, “Andrew Young, Ennisbrook,” he said, “Is he expecting you?” He didn’t believe me at first when I said, “I’m Andrew Young,” but a call to the manager, who confirmed the identity of the redneck in the Jeep, convinced him.

  When the sun was shining and the breeze carried the scent of the ever-blooming flowers through the air, Santa Barbara was so beautiful that I almost forgot we were on the run with John Edwards’s pregnant mistress. But then I would get back to the house and discover that Rielle was ranting about some bit of praise John Edwards had offered to his wife during a TV interview or that my wife had received a hostile message on her cell phone from Elizabeth. In one, which we saved, she said, “We thought you should know that this is not Andrew’s first woman,” and then she cackled into the phone.

  Listening to this stuff, I became convinced that her husband’s infidelity, the inevitable end of the campaign, and her ongoing battle with cancer had become too much for Mrs. Edwards to bear with any grace. She didn’t want to recognize the doubts sown in the minds of voters by the Enquirer or the possibility that Obama—with the help of several Edwards castoffs, including David Axelrod and Julianna Smoot—was simply a better candidate. She preferred to believe that I was responsible for John Edwards losing his advantage a
nd the caucuses in Iowa and getting clobbered in New Hampshire.

  The last straw for the campaign came on January 26, when the senator finished third in the primary in South Carolina, where he was born. After this defeat, he quit the race. However, anticipating a convention split between Obama and Clinton, where his handful of delegates could determine the winner, he didn’t officially end his campaign but merely “suspended” it. “It’s time for me to step aside,” he said, “so that history can—so that history can blaze its path.” Ironically enough, Rudy Giuliani, whose sign had annoyed Elizabeth Edwards every time she left her house, dropped out of the Republican race on the same day her husband ended his run for the Democratic nomination.

  When I spoke to him next, Senator Edwards sounded defeated, but he was already scheming about how to turn his endorsement, and his hold on a few delegates, into a top position in the next administration. It was impossible to get him to focus on resolving Rielle’s status and mine. Fred Baron was similarly evasive when I pressed him.

  But at night, when the house turned quiet, Cheri and I questioned every decision we had made in the previous year. As the days passed and the birth of Rielle’s baby drew closer, we became less confident about the promises the senator and Fred Baron had made to help us get back to our old life. When the kids asked for the umpteenth time, “When are we going back home?” and we said, “Soon,” we felt hollow. My decision to cover for John Edwards, a choice made out of loyalty, friendship, and hope for my own future as well as the country’s, was turning out to be a foolish mistake I was powerless to correct. As far as the world was concerned, I was now the guy who had confessed to an affair and taken responsibility. If I recanted, I would then be the guy who foolishly took the blame for the sin of a man who didn’t deserve to be protected.

  Twelve

  “MY LIFE IS HELL”

  J

  ohn and Elizabeth Edwards held their “farewell and thank-you” party for the people who had worked for, volunteered for, and funded the 2008 campaign in the barn-style gym at their estate, where a stage and sound system had been included in the design for just such an occasion. The crowd numbered about five hundred and included friends, family, donors, staff, and a smattering of celebrities, including basketball coach Dean Smith and actor Danny Glover.

  This kind of get-together is a lot like an old-fashioned Irish wake, where people have an opportunity to both celebrate and begin mourning. The comparison seems even more appropriate if you consider that those who idolize and devote themselves to a candidate come to feel that the campaign is like a big family. In this family, John and Elizabeth played the role of mom and dad, and at their party they were so obviously angry with each other that they made all the children nervous.

  I’m confident writing about an event I didn’t attend because I received dozens of texts and phone calls from people who did—many came during the party—and they all reported the same thing: The senator mingled easily, thanked people profusely, and gave a brief talk that my friend Tim Toben reported was heartfelt and kind. Toben had once been captivated by John Edwards, but unlike others, he had developed powerful doubts. He said that at the party Elizabeth told several people what a truly bad person I was.

  Other friends who attended the farewell told me that the senator and his wife were noticeably cold to each other. They spent most of the night in different corners of the room and rarely came together. When it was time for them to speak, they stood at opposite ends of the stage. The way they related to each other made the members of the “family” feel as if the parents were fighting. If you recall from your own family what that’s like, then you know that the folks the Edwardses were supposed to be thanking felt awkward and uncomfortable. During the campaign, this kind of thing happened far too often, as the candidate and his wife argued while staffers waited and wondered what to do.

  Hearing about how Mrs. Edwards had behaved made it easier for me to accept that I didn’t attend the party. I resented being shunned, especially when I thought about all I had done to help the Edwardses build their public lives and the very house where the party was held. And certainly the sacrifices that Cheri, the kids, and I continued to make as political fugitives made me feel angry. But giving up the stress of being around the Edwardses when they were fighting was no sacrifice at all.

  As the weeks passed at our Santa Barbara hideaway, Cheri worked especially hard to make our existence normal. With their homeschool teacher coming every day, the kids made spectacular academic progress. We returned to the nightly routine of home-cooked dinners and enrolled the kids in various lessons and activities. Gracie went to a theater program, and Brody played every organized sport available. And at night when we said our prayers, we included blessings for “Fred, and Jaya and her baby” as well as Pepper (the cat) and Mr. Turtle.

  In her part of the house, Rielle set up a nursery, lit candles to promote spiritual harmony, and talked on the phone with friends and her adviser Bob. We tried to give her privacy because it’s hard enough by itself to carry around a full-term, about-to-be-born child. She didn’t need us staring at her all the time. The one thing we all did together, without fail, was gather around a TV set to watch the American Idol talent contest every week.

  By the middle of February, almost everyone at the house had selected a favorite idol contestant. Rielle and Cooper liked David Archuleta. Cheri and Gracie favored David Cook, and Brody was fond of a pretty young woman named Brooke White. I had trouble settling on just one, so I changed my vote from week to week, which made the debates we had about the talents of the various singers that much more fun.

  The Idol show moved from the audition phase to the true competition in mid-February, just as the due date for Rielle’s baby came and went. Feeling ever more uncomfortable, Rielle didn’t move much off the sofa, where she waited for the senator’s calls and scanned the TV news channels for stories about him. On February 17, I got a voice mail from Rielle saying she’d just seen a picture of the Edwardses meeting with Barack Obama, who had gone to Chapel Hill seeking an endorsement. “Johnny and Elizabeth could not be farther apart from each other,” she said, laughing. “I mean, like, they’re on separate sides of the driveway.”

  Although she took pleasure in seeing the Edwardses look alienated from each other, Rielle was always pained by the sight of Elizabeth Edwards and frustrated over being unable to contact the senator whenever she wanted to talk. On the night after she saw the “Obama visits Edwards” TV report, Rielle found Cheri’s phone and used it to try to call him at his home. It was eleven P.M. there, and when Mrs. Edwards answered, Rielle hung up without saying a word. The senator’s wife promptly called back and left a message that began in a pleasant tone as she said, “Cheri, I don’t know whether it was you or Andrew who called us. You are welcome to call us anytime you want.” But then, as she got wound up, she became contradictory and scolding. “You have a pretty screwed-up life right now, I understand, with . . . uh, another child . . . [pause] and I am willing to talk to you, Cheri, but I don’t want Andrew to call us, and you all can’t be a part of our lives. We are trying to wash our hands of this filth.”

  After we heard this message, I called the Batphone, which the senator now kept hidden somewhere in the barn/gymnasium, where he spent most of his days and nights in a form of marital exile. The phone wasn’t set up to receive messages, but every once in a while he would tell Elizabeth he was going to exercise or shoot baskets so that he could check the call history. When I talked to him this time, he told me I needed to control Rielle more closely and to just ignore his wife. We talked politics for a while, and I encouraged him to find something to do that would connect him to his main issue of fighting for the poor and middle class.

  “Imagine if instead of Hillary and Barack seeing you at your house, they met you at a Habitat for Humanity work site in New Orleans or even in Greensboro, a few miles away,” I said. “That would have been a better picture.”

  He brushed off the suggestion by saying s
omething about how he was going through a difficult time and needed to be home. He then went on to gush about his encounter with Obama. He said he was leaning toward endorsing him, but Elizabeth had been appalled by Obama’s lack of detailed ideas about health care reform. However, the senator was most excited by how his onetime adversary was impressed by the basketball court at the mansion, which is a replica of the floor at UNC, where they traded shots in a game of H-O-R-S-E. (Edwards crowed about how he had won.) Hillary Clinton had already made a similar pilgrimage to Chapel Hill (no H-O-R-S-E), and although Mrs. Edwards wanted her to get the endorsement, he wanted only to endorse the eventual winner. He believed his endorsement was influential enough to determine the winner. He told me he offered it to both Clinton and Obama—first come, first served—in exchange for their commitment to his being named vice president.

  Three months would pass before the senator announced his preference for Obama. As he used that time to angle for either the vice presidency or a spot in the cabinet of a future administration, the one Chapel Hill friend who still spoke to me, Tim Toben, became ever more agitated about the man’s audacity.

  A decade of being “the good soldier” had reinforced my tendency to be loyal to the extreme. And besides being loyal to the senator, I had been boxed in by Elizabeth Edwards, who had called every person who might have helped me start over in a new job to say that I was a liar, a cheat, and a thief. She spread the rumor that Rielle was just “one of Andrew’s women” and I had delivered her to the senator as if I were a pimp. Under the cloud she had created, beginning when the campaign was still in full swing, only John Edwards was in a position to clear my name and help me start over. The only hope I had was that once his new child arrived, he would be moved to do the right thing.