Customer Reviews

The Politician: An Insider's Account of John Edwards's Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down

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Reading this book is like falling down a rabbit hole into a world where everyone is mad.

John Edwards is portrayed as a sociopath with a Cheshire grin. Elizabeth Edwards, (with her creepy voicemails), comes across as menacing and unstable. From where I'm sitting, the author appears to be a spineless, yes-man, flunky who repeatedly cites his "need for healthcare" as an excuse for his questionable behavior.

Not only is this book a devastating indictment of the Edwards family and their cronies -- it really gives one pause as to what is going on in Washington, in general. How can government ever improve when the inmates are literally running the asylum?

I wouldn't let any of these people within 100 yards of my family much less give them a vote for anything.

This is 301 pages of lying, cheating, power-grabbing and backstabbing. It is a veritable encyclopedia of how not to live your life.

If someone had asked me three years ago what the future for John Edwards would look like, I most certainly would have said he would one day be President of the United States. He had everything going for him--wonderful wife, lovely children, the story of a dad finding the strength to overcome the death of his teenage boy, wealth most of us can only dream of, a background as a tremendously successful lawyer, an already established career as a US senator, charismatic speaking ability, good looks, a clean past, a failed, yet flattering showing as John Kerry's running mate, and a reputation as a populist who was willing to fight for poor people like no one else. Enter 2008 and Edwards' admission of having an affair with Rielle Hunter. And then fast-forward to 2010 and the admission of fathering a child that all of us already knew was his. Oh how the mighty have fallen! The book is written by a true insider, and whether you agree with that idea or not, Andrew Young isn't shy about opening up.

I remember first hearing about the affair back in 2008. I couldn't believe it--not because I enjoy judging people who cheat--that's none of my business--but rather for the unforgivable timing of it...and I think most Americans felt the same way. His wife had incurable cancer for God's sake! And he had been a serious candidate for the democratic nomination. His asking for my vote made the affair "my business" because in most cases (save Clinton) cheating on your wife is an automatic political disqualifier--and Edwards knew this yet did it anyway. I remember saying, "You mean to tell me that this guy was running a serious campaign with the complete knowledge that he had had this intense affair?" What if he had gotten the nomination, won the presidency, and just before the inauguration this had all come out? Democrats would have been ROYALY screwed and Republicans would have been dancing in the streets.

The book makes this point well beyond what I just said. Young not only points all of this out with great depth, but he tells us much more, and it is so shocking that it's hard to believe. But considering that ever since the book's release date was made public, Edwards has admitted fathering the child and the Edwards' have split up, I think the book has solid credibility as a result. They wanted to air all of their dirty laundry before the American people could read about it. Perhaps they were thinking that this would take some of the shock value away. Well, it did no such thing. Most of what is in the book is news to me and will be news to you. It will be interesting to see what parts of it the Edwards' try to deny and discredit, because right now, I want to believe that a lot of this is false.

At first I couldn't believe that a close Edwards ally was disgusting enough to spew all of this private information in a book. But it needed to be written because the Edwards' ran for the presidency while deceiving the American people. And they will pay a painful price for the rest of their lives. They don't need me to pile on. I have compassion for them. People don't have to be perfect for me to like them. Unfortunately, for the Edwards', many people want to worship unflawed individuals. But the book made me realize how the world of high stakes politics can tear even the most decent people down, eat away at them, and lead them to do the unimaginable. It made me wonder if Elizabeth wanted the White House more than John did. I read just about everything to do with the current political discourse and climate. I'm a political junkie. And if you like reading about the intimate details of a family clawing its way to the powerful, political top, and want to understand the mind-blowing things that can happen on that journey, "The Politician" is for you. I've read two books this year that stopped me in my tracks and shook the heck out of me--71 Days: The Media Assault On Obama by Michael Jason Overstreet and this one. Both are extraordinarily and shockingly eye opening and historically powerful. 71 Days: The Media Assault On Obama will likely get some people in the media FIRED!!!

I bought this book and read it in one sitting and you will too. It is almost impossible to beleive that this is not fiction. It reads like one of the best of Dominick Dunne's tales of power and privelege run amok. But its all true, nobody comes out of this one smelling like a rose, nobody, but Edwards and the women who surround him are actually frightening!
Whatever the authours sins of ommision or commision are, he is a nice man who is clearly trying to put his life back in the face of a surfeit of failed idealsim. Not one wasted page, its a gripping read, most fun book I have read in a long while.

After reading four or five pages of the first chapter I was struck by how bloodworm like the author is. Worms are soft, and largely helpless but bloodworms are capable of offering up a painful bite and Andrew Young does with this book. Alas, most of the book's ammo has already been shot. If you read Game Change or the National Enquirer you already know that John Edwards is spoiled brat, ( a brat can grow up in a mansion or he can grow up in a trailer park) that Elizabeth was more like his mother than his woman and that the marriage wasn't that normal long before the chick with the camera showed up. There's no new dirt on Edwards. The only interesting thing in a freak show sort of way is the horrifying relationship between Young and Edwards.

Young turned himself into something worse than a slave. He neglected his own family to do the most menial things for the Edwardes. Nothing seemed too much and even ruining his own family's holidays didn't make him stand up and quit. When Edwards foisted his girlfriend off on Young he did it knowing that no other staffer would put up with that. Why Young didn't break free years ago when he could've had a chance to get another job and is a mystery. Young offers some mealey mouthed excuses but they don't wash. He states that his life has been a mess and now he just wants to begin again and he is careful to repeatedly slam Republicans like a good little Dem operative but it's too no avail. America is the land of second chances but nobody in North Carolina politics is ever going to trust or hire him again. The book is a lesson to would be politicians everywhere. Let your friends be your friends and your sevants be your servants and your office staff stay in the office and never, ever blur the lines or cross them because the bitterness will build up and come back to get you one day.

This is a story with no heroes but several victims. Cate, Jack, Emma and Frances, not to mention Young's own kids didn't deserve this mess. None of the adults acted well and now the kids have to live with it. Ugly and sad.

I was thinking this book could easily be written off as an extention of tabloid trash. It is well-written, obviously well-documented, and while I am writing this it is not the end of the story based on current developments regarding that sex tape and the 1 mil plus that was dedicated to this cover-up.
John Edwards failed to man-up and admit he lied in increments to his wife, his jack-of-all-trades Andrew Young, and the american people when he confessed paternity re: Frances Quinn Hunter through a spokesman. Naturally he was in Haiti saving the people with his $400 haircut and his toothy grin. I bought this book because I figured his contrite prepared announcement was timed to deflect the publication of this tell all. What did he fear? Apparently there was a lot he hoped people would ignore such as this book which is fairly straightforward.
The Politician is a compeling and factual account of John Edwards' grab for power and his subsequent downfall. It reads like a political thriller, but is somewhat creepy and frightening re: the depths of ambition, greed, lust, narcisism, and privilege that extends into the world of modern day american politics. I kept thinking how sincere Edwards came across while he was lying into a tv camera. Geez, he could have been president. Wasn't Bill Clinton enough? All these folks are hypocrites. No wonder most people don't trust politicians.
Andrew Young portrays himself as an Edwards worshipper who thinks the man is going to save the world when he becomes president. Andrew might aptly be described as a gofer who hitches himself to the Edwards bandwagon in hopes of sunning himself in Edwards' reflected glory while incrementally increasing his personal income. It appears as if Edwards accurately sizes up Young as the perfect fall-guy as his affair with the implausible Rielle Hunter picks up steam without much discretion. The rest might be tacked up as tabloid history except Young started documenting the Edwards' activities and retaining voice mails. When Edwards unceremoniously ditches Young, he decides to set the record straight with this book. The Politician manages to make sense of Edwards' half truths in increments and Mrs. Edwards frenzied communications with Young and his wife.
Not surprisingly, no one comes off well in this book including the author and his wife. Even Elizabeth Edwards is portrayed as erratic, suspicious, angry, and crazed. Sadly, considering all she had to put up with re: her sleezy husband, it is amazing that she's managed to survive. Ultimately the real victims in this story are the children involved.
This booked managed to nail it for me regarding what actually happened and when. I recommend this book to any political junkie or anyone who wants to know the facts surrounding this mess. The Politician proves that truth is stranger than fiction.

If one reads this book looking for salacious gossip on the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter affair than I actually recommend reading the articles from "The National Enquirer." As they have done a more in-depth job of the details. However, if one is seeking insight into the life of a political campaign staffer then I do recommend this book, highly. As a former staffer on local and state-wide campaigns I recognize many of the elements present in this book. The devotion to the candidate, to the point where higher principles such as right and wrong get blurred. The all consuming, twenty-four hour seven days a week, schedule dependent upon the candidate's whims. The intense competition and backbiting between the staffers. The ability of the candidates to just drop cold a friend they were previously close to. The ability of the candidate to switch personalities on and off in the blink of an eye. All these elements are present in this narrative and quite typical. What is revealing in this book is the author's flagrant willingness to participate in facilitating John Edwards' communication with Rielle Hunter. Sure he is concerned about providing for his family, but he seems unaware that in so doing he is enabling another family to be destroyed. The author is a "yes" man to the point where it is overdone. He ties his future so tightly with that of John Edwards that at times he sees no way out of the mess. When in reality, he could have just had his wife take up nursing again until the author found a less humiliating position. However, as one reads the author's narrative one gets pulled into his way of thinking. It isn't until one pulls away from the text that one realizes the author in a sense got what he deserved. He acted as a celestina and then was dropped when he was of no further use. That is what happens when one makes a pact with the devil. So while at first one sides with the author and even sympathizes with him. Upon further reflection the author reveals himself to be just another one of these political wannabes who eventually gets caught in his own web of deceit that he has spun. The book in short is a worthwhile read.

I read this book in a day and a half and would highly recommend it for the lessons it teaches. First, Edwards was a
presidential contender who invited the public to learn all about him, asked that same public for donations and their time, and most importantly, their trust. He violated that trust; in the face of given a chance to come clean, he kept on violating that trust. His choice of "other woman" was an unsteady floozy who managed to con him at his own game. I suspect she had a game plan all along. She told him she couldn't get pregnant, then does.
She's narcissitic too, couldn't fetch her own milk for coffee, lazed around on other peoples' money, her Batphone a priority and nuisance for those who catered to her and had to keep her in touch with Edwards. They're both full of entitlement.

By the time I finished the book, I wondered how in God's name could a presidential contender be bothered with her neediness and have any spare time to campaign? Not to mention, his own children and a wife who was terminally ill.
He had to be winging it on his style because substance and character had flown out the window years ago. It's clear that he easily compartmentalized some serious personal issues and went on as if nothing had ever happened.
He would have sold snake oil forever. His greatist gift, pulling the wool over everyone's eyes..until now.


In true form, he complains about his wife who is busy checking his cell phone. He shifts the blame to her..oh how clever. He's a cheating pig but now his wife is the problem with her incessant checking. Nevermind that Edwards has lied so much and confused/tormented her with outlandish stories. In his mind, his wife has become the problem.
There, you have it. He always has someone else or some thing else to blame. This book is not just about betrayal of those close to Edwards. There is a sense of enormous loss and grief here caused by the damage two lust greedy people caused. Edwards may be an intellectual, but he's had the emotional depth of a mud puddle for several years.

The Edwards affair (quite literally "affair") has been dissed, discussed, and dissected on almost every media outlet imaginable. However, you haven't really heard the up close and personal story until you hear it from Andrew Young, Edwards's longtime aide, or as some scribes have described him "toady."

After hearing Edwards speak and easily defeating an early opponent Young went to work in the then senator's office where in his words he volunteered to do everything. It seems, he would have pressed trousers if the opportunity had arisen.. He describes himself as butler, shopper, driver, and always available for the entire Edwards family. No task was too menial for Young when he believed Edwards would some day sit in the White House, where Young would also have a place of prominence.

Unfortunately, there are no good guys in this story - not even Young who, after all, did make choices. He certainly did not have to confess to being the father of Rielle Hunter's illegitimate child. (Now, of course, that's all behind us as Edwards has recently admitted parentage.) However, the path from then to now is filled with appalling details, all of which Young seems eager to share.

Elizabeth Edwards, self-canonized in her memoir "Resilience" is described as a dictatorial biddy who ordered people around, dropped nasty phone messages for staff members she considered to be errant, and was not prone to saying "thank you." Rielle Hunter, a videographer" is pictured as an opportunist, a sexually free gal, who enjoyed the luxuries given during her pregnancy (including a lavish home in Santa Barbara).

If Edwards was even half as Young reports, he is a liar, a cheat, self-centered, and, thank goodness for us, no longer in the political arena.

Young spares his audience few details, including conversations with Hunter during which he claims to have acted as a sounding board, listening to explicit descriptions of sexual encounters. THE POLITICIAN is a disturbing story, and at times will be shocking to many.

With over 30 years experience in radio and television broadcasting as well as in audiobook narration, Kevin Foley gives telling voice to the rise and fall of John Edwards.

- Gail Cooke

I have to admit that I was captivated by John Edwards during the 2008 election. He struck me as refreshingly clean cut, a devoted family man and someone who really cared about the poor and less fortunate in our society. I shudder to think about what kind of disaster he could have wrecked upon the country after reading The Politician. The book is a gripping page turner that gives a real life portrayal of John Edwards as he really was and is; a lying, hypocritical, egocentric, narcisstic, greedy, unconsciousiable, scum bag-coward who would no doubt have betrayed the country the way he did everyone around him if he felt it was in his own best interest.
While I have sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards because of her illness and the behavior of her husband, I was also shocked at Young's examples of her vindictive, petty and power seeking behavior. That is a side of her personality that stays hidden beneath the surface on t.v. interviews.
Andrew Young explains how he got caught up and became an accomplice (enabler) to the lies and deceit he participated in working as Edwards' aide during the campaign. He doesn't try to excuse himself but rather explains how idealism, loyalty and concern for his family's welfare all contributed to his slide down the slippery slope into the cesspool where he became complicit in Edwards'reprehensible conduct.
This book is an eye-opening and terrifying account of how politicians are able to dupe the American public about who they really are. I only wish that more campaign workers who are privy to what really goes on behind the curtain and undercover would expose charlatans like Edwards so that the voting public would know who they truely are.

I read this book over the weekend and I just could not put it down. To think that John Edwards was running for president while he was covering up his despicable behavior is mind blowing. He deceived the country and that is why it was important for me to read this book. I have mixed feelings regarding Elizabeth Edwards as she should not come out of this smelling like a rose. Her desire to be first Lady and see her husband as President drove her to participate in the coverup. Even though she knew her husband was having an affair she still stood in front of the American people and lied through her teeth. I have the utmost compassion for the terrible illness that she has been stricken with, however, that does not give her a free pass to deceive the american people.

Andrew Young was treated like a water boy by the Edwards family. They put themselves on pedestals and used people to get ahead. Andrew Young is responsible for the choices that he made and obviously had some sort of obsession with the Edwards. Did he and his wife really think that John Edwards was going to get away with everything? How ignorant could they be? Young pretty much got what he deserved as he allowed them to treat him that way. In any event, I am still glad that he wrote the book and came clean with the American People. We deserved to know the truth as this was a man who was campaigning to be President of the United States.