Teach your children well

RALEIGH, N.C. -- His once-prominent political career is buried and the turmoil of his marriage is playing out in public. Now, John Edwards is facing a federal inquiry.

The two-time Democratic presidential candidate acknowledged Sunday that investigators are assessing how he spent his campaign funds _ a subject that could carry his extramarital affair from the tabloids to the courtroom. Edwards' political action committee paid more than $100,000 for video production to the firm of the woman with whom Edwards had an affair.

The former North Carolina senator said in a carefully worded statement that he is cooperating.

[From John Edwards faces federal investigation - washingtonpost.com]

Sadly, one of the most promising politicians in recent times is being investigated by the feds for pissing away campaign money to pay off the woman he was having an affair with -- while his wife was battling cancer and his presidential campaign was going down in flames.

I say "sadly" because I really believed in John Edwards. If you studied the candidates a year or so before the election, he was the one who was right on the issues. He was the one who would undo the evils of the Bush years, end the war and put our nation on the right track.

His candidacy came at a time when I was almost physically ill about Dubya's policies and the direction of our country. I was ready to drop everything and go on the road full-time to elect Edwards. Luckily for me, I had a heart-to-heart with an old friend -- a Republican who had believed in, and fought for, many candidates over the years, and who had often been disappointed by them.

My only hesitation, I told my friend, was that I was reluctant to be away from my grandchildren for weeks and months at a time. My friend wisely told me that my time and energy would be better invested in the grandkids.

He was right.

--Paul Knue