The Invisible Hand

Sitting Here in Limbo

Know how hard it is to go to a restaurant with a kid under ten? Imagine campaigning for president with your kids in tow.

Sure it would be miserable for you but imagine the living hell it would be for the kiddies. No friends. No attention from Mom or Dad. Nothing but grownups talking to each other on and on all day long.

If you still can’t picture it, check out this New York Times video about the lovely and talented John Edwards. He’s campaigning for President and I guess he wants to show what a great father he is by taking his kids out of school and dragging them through endless photo ops in Middle America on a rented bus.

Frankly, I’d do the same thing if I had to run for President. But I don’t have to, and neither does Edwards. I’m sure the campaign thinks that his pursuit of the presidency even though his wife has cancer and his kids are bored out of their minds is proof of Edwards’s’s’s focus and perseverance.

But I think it just makes him remarkably selfish. All the more remarkable since he lost his eldest son in an accident and must surely regret the lost opportunities to share love and life. Why then subject your other children to the whims of your career?

His kids are certainly getting a unique education though. When this is over they should be able to write a dissertation on child exploitation.