With a story like this it's hard to take the high road and disentangle the personal from the political. With Clinton it was perjury; with Elitot Spitzer it was prostitutes -- in other words, there were consequences of one's transgressions which entered the political sphere. But with Edwards there is no illegal conduct; only an ethical lapse made all the more lurid considering his wife's health.
Where the two planes cross, however, is over the fact that Edwards was a presidential candidate while he was having an affair. His conduct was not just a disgrace to the highest office for which he felt qualified, but also to a party that, had it nominated him, would have reaped the fallout we're seeing today. Edwards' candidacy never took off, but if it did, as he and millions of his supporters wanted it to, then today might have been one of the the darkest days of the Democratic Party.
Did Edwards consider that? He must have, and he must have ignored it. And then he lied and tried to cover it up. As the ABC News story notes, Rielle Hunter has been living "under assumed names in a series of expensive homes in North Carolina and, more recently, in Santa Barbara, California." Edwards denies paying her off, but said it's possible friends and associates might have. It's actions like these which give the public every reason to question Edwards' integrity -- a key characteristic most would argue for a president -- and not excuse it as "just sex."
That, I think, is why Edwards' political career is now over. All politicians who want to become president have an ego problem, but what is asked of them is to sacrifice part of themselves for the greater good -- whether that be a political party or an entire nation. By his actions, Edwards has shown he wasn't able to do that: He was willing to ruin the hopes of his party and the trust of his family and voters to win the highest prize.
