How Edwards Destroyed His Political Career

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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January 09, 2010

How Edwards Destroyed His Political Career

New York magazine runs a brutally-tough but must-read excerpt from Game Change on how John Edwards handled the disclosure of his extramarital affair.

"For all the high drama of the Obama-Clinton battle and the historic import of the former's general-election victory over McCain, Edwards's story is equally, lastingly resonant: an archetypal political tragedy in which the very same qualities that fuel any presidential bid -- ego, hubris, vanity, neediness, a kind of delusion -- became all-consuming and self-destructive. And in which the gap between public facade and private reality simply grew too vast to bridge."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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January 09, 2010