THE QUESTION I have for Elizabeth Edwards is why?
Other than to rack up some free publicity for her memoir, what's the point speaking out now about husband John's infidelity?
During the 2008 presidential campaign, she did a bang-up of keeping up the charade of being happily married.
Even after her husband faced intense criticism for continuing in the race after her cancer returned, Elizabeth remained the dutiful political wife, keeping mum about her husband's extramarital affair.
Oh, how she must have seethed!
Maybe Elizabeth stayed silent because of the kids.
But I suspect it was because she was every bit as ambitious for her husband's political career as he was himself.
But that's behind them now. Aside from book sales, there's nothing to gain besides some personal satisfaction by putting John Edwards on blast by talking about it on the "Oprah Winfrey Show." The interview airs tomorrow.
Keeping quiet gained her automatic sympathy. You "tsk, tsk" and imagine her the wronged victim in this sordid affair. But by dredging all this up again, it's a reminder that she, too, victimized the American public by playing along with her husband's deceptions.
And it always looks bad when the cheated-on spouse trashes the other woman. It's like that old childhood ditty: "I'm rubber, you're glue; whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you." In the snippets I've read about her interview with Oprah, Elizabeth all but calls former campaign employee Rielle Hunter a home wrecker.
"We're basically old-fashioned people," Edwards said. "So, this was a pretty big leap for him. Maybe it's being so different is what was attractive."
Elizabeth also casts doubt on whether Hunter's daughter is her husband's.
"I've seen a picture of the baby. I have no idea. It doesn't look like my children but I don't have any idea," she said in an "O" magazine piece to be published next month.
You'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel for this tragic mother of three, who probably longs for nothing more than to live long enough to see her two youngest children, who are in grade school, reach adulthood.
Elizabeth wrote in her new memoir, "Resilience," that when she learned about her husband's affair, she cried and threw up.
Not to be crude but that giant gagging sound you hear is the sound of America retching. Democratic voters are choking at the thought of what would have happened if Edwards had somehow won the Democratic nomination, only to have lost the election once word leaked about his lover.
It's a shame that a candidate with as much promise as Edwards has wound up on the dust heap of political has-beens because of extramarital hanky-panky.
His antipoverty agenda was admirable for its scope. But as much as we Americans pretend that the private escapades of politicians don't matter, character still counts with most of us. No one wants a candidate who's a proven liar.
On a shelf at home, I have Elizabeth's first memoir, "Saving Grace." When I read it, I remember flipping through the pages and imag
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