by Andrew Young
Five minutes later, the manager called me back and agreed to call his security men on the radio and have them leave the hallway. But this still left the Edwards staffers who were upstairs and wanted an explanation. I called Rielle again, then had her open the door a crack and, since Mrs. Edwards had turned my former assistant against me, I told her to hand the phone to one of the other staffers. When he got on I said, “Who the hell is this?” with as much authority and impatience as I could muster.
With my opponent back on his heels, I said, “This is Andrew Young.” I then said that all he needed to know was that the woman in the room was someone I had sent with confidential documents because every call I had made the previous night had gone unanswered by staff people, who were out partying. (This was an assumption that turned out to be true.) “I had to get one of my friends to do your damn job, so leave her alone.”
The bluff worked and they left Rielle alone. I then instructed her to pack up and call me as she left the room. She did as I told her, and I kept her on the phone to calm her as she walked down the hallway, rode the elevator, crossed through the lobby, and went outside to a cab stand. She noticed the Edwards staffers who had come to the door of the room outside the hotel, but they saw her on the phone and didn’t intercept her. She breathed a huge sigh of relief and then started laughing as the cab departed the hotel, with her aboard, safe and still secret. I called the senator and told him the crisis was over.
Senator Edwards thanked me up and down on the day I got Rielle out of the Florida hotel, but the next time I saw him, he’d developed a case of amnesia about this event. Having had my daytime driving privileges restored, I had picked him up at the airport, following our usual routine. I had continued to tease him by putting down the armrest. He looked at me and said, “Why do you keep doin’ that?”
I stayed silent as he handed me the Batphone, enjoyed a sip of wine, and sighed with relief. I then casually mentioned the tight scrape we had just survived. He turned to me and with a perfectly straight face said, “I don’t know what you are talking about. Rielle wasn’t in Florida.”
I looked at him, amazed, and said something about how he must be joking. Of course Rielle was in Florida with him. She had been discovered by the staff, and I had come up with a brilliant scheme to explain why there was a woman in the shower of his suite. The senator looked at me blankly, repeated that “Rielle was never in Florida,” and asked me how I could say such a thing.
We were hurtling down the interstate, and since I had to keep my attention on the road, I didn’t stare into his eyes directly. But I could tell from his tone of voice that he truly believed what he was saying. I decided that he was either the best liar in the world or he was having some sort of psychological episode. My phone records showed more than thirty calls with him, Rielle, and the Westin on the day of this incident. Clearly, I could prove to him that something big had happened that day. But I decided to drop the subject.
The way I saw it, Rielle presented a problem with three possible outcomes. If Edwards ended the relationship, she would probably go to the press, reveal the affair, and, I assumed, supply enough solid evidence to make the story stick. Since he had presented himself to the country as the handsome and brilliant man of the people who was standing by his wife through her illness, news of an affair would end Senator Edwards’s political career. If he followed the second option, he could keep seeing Rielle and, if Elizabeth found out, risk a divorce that would expose him in the same way. The difference here was that Mrs. Edwards’s desire to live in the White House was as great as, if not greater than, his. She had already accepted his personal betrayals as part of the price for the real estate at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The third option would be to continue to see Rielle and hope to keep Mrs. Edwards in the dark until after the election. Callous as it was, the senator chose this last option and pursued the presidency with all the energy he could muster while talking to me about how much easier life would be without Elizabeth. I thought all of this was repulsive, but since she had forced me out of her life, I felt there was nothing I could do about it.
Ironically, once the senator was relaxed about discussing Rielle with me, he frequently aired the same kinds of complaints about her that he had expressed about Mrs. Edwards in the past. He said Rielle was overly demanding and emotional, and he frequently called her “crazy.” But just as he counted on his sometimes “crazy” wife for counsel and support, he depended on “crazy” Rielle’s input and advice. Along with her commitment to do everything and anything he requested as part of her spiritual mission to see him become a world leader, she offered political guidance, comments on strategy, and criticisms on every aspect of his performance from wardrobe to cadence. Although it came mixed with horoscope readings and other New Age mumbo jumbo, the senator genuinely valued Rielle’s input. He called her before every debate or major public appearance and generally called her afterward for a critique. I know, because I was the go-between who used three-way calling to connect them so no record of Rielle’s number would appear on his phone.
Strange as it may sound for a man raised a Southern Baptist, I think the senator was open to the idea that Rielle might have a special power to see into the future—a startling number of powerful people believe in such things—and that her age and social background meant she could speak for a part of the electorate he wanted to reach. Finally, in listening to her and including her in the campaign, he rewarded her for accepting the mistress role and staying in the background. She clearly loved playing secret adviser to a future president, and he fed her feeling of importance by having me send her the daily schedule, clippings from the national press, and important memos so they could discuss them. Regardless of her flakiness, she did provide an interesting and creative perspective on his campaign.
Besides information, Rielle needed money. She had worked in the past as a spiritual adviser, but now believed her life’s purpose was serving John Edwards. The senator wanted to keep her happy but had difficulty getting money to her. He once gave her his bank card, but when Mrs. Edwards saw that a large sum had been withdrawn in New York when her husband was in California, she sent out an alarm. He was able to make some kind of excuse to cover up this incident, but from that point on he asked me to handle Rielle’s finances. I used my credit card to book hotel rooms and airline flights for Rielle. I even gave him cash to give her—a few hundred dollars at a time—when I took him to the airport for outbound flights. He promised I would be repaid when a wealthy benefactor was recruited to cover these costs or when Mrs. Edwards died.
“I’ll take care of you, Andrew,” he said. “You know I’m good for it.”
E
lizabeth Edwards’s cancer had hung over her family and the senator’s various organizations ever since it was discovered in 2004. At that time, it was described as a metastatic form of breast cancer that is almost always fatal, and the senator talked about the future in the bleakest terms. But three years after it was discovered and her treatment was begun, Mrs. Edwards seemed as robust as ever. She was so active that I sometimes forgot she had been diagnosed.
In many ways, the senator acted as if she were gone already. In March he arranged to celebrate Rielle’s birthday at the Hotel Fort Des Moines while he campaigned in Iowa. When the date arrived, I got an urgent call from John Davis, who was with him. The plans had been changed, he said, and the boss was coming home. He gave me the time to pick him up at the private hangar at Raleigh-Durham International and warned me that the senator was “very upset.” He didn’t know what had happened, but he knew it was bad.
At the airport, Edwards skipped the usual handshakes he offered the ground crew and hustled to my Suburban. He didn’t say a word until we had left the airport proper and had merged onto the interstate. “Elizabeth’s cancer is back,” he said, “and it’s bad.”
The senator looked out the window and cried as he told me that Elizabeth’s cancer had spread to her bones. He told me she had heard one of her ribs break as she w
as moving a box “and cussing you out, Andrew, for putting it in the wrong place.” Publicly, she would say the fracture happened when Senator Edwards had hugged her too hard. I wondered what she thought she gained from this version of events.
Imaging done at the hospital had turned up a fracture on one side of Mrs. Edwards’s rib cage and a mass on the other. A biopsy had shown a malignancy in one rib, and further tests indicated the cancer had spread to other areas of the body. As he talked about his wife’s condition, the senator used words like “fatal” and “terminal” and seemed to be genuinely grief-stricken. But then, as we reached a point halfway to his house, the conversation turned to the campaign and he made it clear that they both wanted it to continue. Within days they agreed that this diagnosis would generate positive publicity after frustrating months when the press ignored him. They actually believed the cancer would give the senator’s poll numbers a boost.
From a coldly political perspective, they were correct. If people believed the campaign was intended to serve others, the brave pursuit of a victory despite the cancer would seem heroic. Anyone else whose spouse had received a death sentence diagnosis might decide to chuck all current plans and devote the time to a sail around the world or anything else his or her heart desired. But the White House was what the Edwardses desired most, and they weren’t going to give up the dream just because of a fatal illness. Instead, they planned to bring them on the campaign trail so the family could be together as much as possible. (They would be “homeschooled” along the way, with lessons taught from books and trips to museums and historic sites wherever they traveled.)
As we exited the interstate and turned west toward Chapel Hill, the senator recalled that Rielle was waiting for him in Iowa. He used my cell phone to call her and explained why he would not be there to celebrate her birthday. When he finished going through his wife’s diagnosis and describing how it would be revealed to the press, he paused to let her respond. She cussed him out so loudly that I could hear almost every word. He let her complain and then kept saying he was sorry until we approached the long driveway that led to his house. The senator repeatedly tried to end the call and finally asked me to pull over since we were near his home, but Rielle wouldn’t stop talking. After the senator finished placating Rielle and ended the call, we then went up the drive, and I let him out. Before he went inside, he told me to send Rielle some flowers but to leave the name John off the card.
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T
he Edwardses told the world about the recurrence of her cancer at a packed press conference conducted in Chapel Hill at the Carolina Inn, a graceful old place made of soft red brick where they had held their wedding reception in 1977. Mrs. Edwards explained how she had broken her rib—the senator joked, “Actually, I was beating her”—and then recounted how her doctor had said there was no reason for her to give up the campaign. She also said that her treatment would consist of a less debilitating type of chemotherapy that could put the cancer into remission and be used again and again “for the rest of my life.”
After watching this performance, most people believed that Elizabeth Edwards was riddled with cancer and not long for this world. (Cheri and I thought she might live weeks or a few months at best.) At headquarters, where many people owed their jobs to her, talk of her courage and strength dominated conversations, and I heard more than one person say, “We should try to win it for Elizabeth.”
Outside of the campaign, the response to their decision to keep on with the quest was mostly positive. A few criticized the Edwardses for their ambition, but in the main they were honored for their courage and forthrightness. Frank Rich of The New York Times would even publish a column titled “Elizabeth Edwards for President.” Others cheered the open way they were dealing with the illness and said they were grateful that the news reports put breast cancer awareness on the public agenda, which might motivate more women to perform self-exams and go to the doctors themselves.
On the Saturday after they announced Mrs. Edwards’s cancer had returned, health care was the focus of a seven-candidate forum sponsored by the Service Employees International Union in Las Vegas. Senator Edwards mentioned his wife’s illness in the course of presenting the most complete prescription for fixing the health care system anyone offered. Compared with Barack Obama, who hemmed and hawed and never offered specifics when asked to cite his priorities, Edwards made a brilliant case that included honest talk about how his plan would require raising taxes. As he made this point, he added, “I think it’s really important, particularly given what’s happened in the last six or seven years in this country, that the president of the United States be honest with the American people.”
In fact, he was being honest about the things he considered to be the public’s business, like taxes and health care, even as he maintained an elaborate fiction when it came to his personal life and the image he projected. Many politicians have taken this approach and said that the ends justified the means. In other words, the illusions they projected were merely the kind of advertising that is required in the age of mass media. Few mortals, and even fewer with the kind of narcissistic drive required to run for president, could really be as upright and decent as the public expects. Similarly, the unrealistic expectations of the press and the public discourage many qualified people from running for office.
A small but telling example of the art of political deception could be seen in the suit Senator Edwards wore for the Las Vegas union event. As he prepared to depart for the debate, he had realized that the label inside the coat read “Made in Italy,” because, in fact, he loved expensive Italian suits and wore them routinely. Trouble is, a union crowd is likely to harbor a wiseacre who will ask a politician if he’s wearing an American, union-stitched suit. When he thought of this possibility, the senator asked me about the label on my jacket—“Made in USA”—and had me take his to a tailor, where the tag from my coat was switched for the one in his. After the debate he said with some anger that he was disatisfied with the tailor’s work. He played a video of the debate and pointed out a wrinkle where the label was installed.
If other candidates haven’t switched labels in a suit, they have done comparable things to avoid embarrassment or promote themselves. Everyone who works at a high level in a campaign knows it goes on and goes along for the good of the candidate or, if you really believe in him or her, for the good of the country. On the day after the health care forum, John Edwards told the audience of 60 Minutes that he was continuing with his run for the White House because he had “a responsibility to this country.” In other words, he was so sure that America needed his leadership that he simply had to stay in the race. Mrs. Edwards agreed and explained that in the time she had lived with cancer, she had learned to accept and even live with the prospect of her death. When Katie Couric pressed her for a more complete explanation, Mrs. Edwards said:
You know, you really have two choices here. I mean, either you push forward with the things that you were doing yesterday or you start dying. That seems to be your only two choices. If I had given up everything that my life was about—first of all, I’d let cancer win before it needed to. You know, maybe eventually it will win. But I’d let it win before I needed to.
It was a good answer, and for the next few weeks the Edwardses offered a version of it in a series of interviews and at campaign stops. The attention they received was so broad, and lasted so long, that media commentators recognized it as a national phenomenon. Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post noted that John Edwards couldn’t get on 60 Minutes with his proposal for health care, but the cancer story “mesmerized people who don’t give a fig about politics.” Polls taken after the publicity about Mrs. Edwards’s cancer showed that her husband was finally gaining ground on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. On the road, Mrs. Edwards drew big crowds and loud cheers. In Des Moines, she went to a TV station to do a live interview via satellite with Larry King as a solo act. In that performance, she was a far cry from the nervous lady
who sat next to Teresa Heinz Kerry to speak to Lesley Stahl in 2004. She was confident and relaxed, and after it was over I heard people say she should be running for the United States Senate.
Rielle watched with envy as Mrs. Edwards became a star. With her growing popularity, she was able to stand in for her husband and double the amount of ground the campaign could cover in a day. But as she expanded the reach of the organization, she also put more stress on the staff, most of whom were young and inexperienced. Although I continued to work as a fund-raiser, Mrs. Edwards had told the people in charge of the day-to-day campaign to take away all my responsibilities and to keep me away from her husband and her house.
I knew she was angry because she believed I had helped the senator communicate with Rielle. (I still didn’t know the senator had told her I was carrying on an affair with Rielle and thereby endangering her husband’s career.) Her fear that something was going on was well-founded, of course, because I had kept the senator’s secrets in the past and I was continuing to help him stay in touch with his onetime camera girl. For months I had been in charge of the Batphone. He kept it with him on the road and then gave it to me when he returned. It then became my job to sneak it back onto the campaign plane and into the pocket of the seat in front of his before he departed again. Security at the airport made this a difficult job, and one time I actually raced off the plane and out of sight as Elizabeth was bringing him by car to the waiting aircraft.
Because she identified me with her husband’s infidelity, but also knew I remained one of his trusted assistants, Mrs. Edwards obsessed over what I knew and what I may have done. She called me over and over again, demanding information I wouldn’t give her. If I didn’t answer, she left angry messages. At various times she accused me of lying, cheating, and even stealing from her household. In furious fights, she insisted her husband fire me, which he couldn’t do because he needed me to take care of Rielle. Of course I hadn’t taken anything from her family, and by pushing me out of campaign operations and putting untested people in charge, she set the stage for mistakes and mishaps.