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Photo: Randy Bayne
Former presidential candidate and U.S. Senator John Edwards

Few Americans could have been as deeply disappointed as me to hear John Edwards’ admission last week of a brief marital affair two years ago — confirming tabloid rumors that, like many, I had refused to believe. An early and ardent supporter of his candidacy, I had considered him above such indiscretions so it’s taken me a few days to regain my bearing on the matter.

Taegan Goddard posted an interesting take on the topic Saturday in his CQ Politics column. I have to admit that several of his points are well taken, as I suspect even the former candidate himself would agree.

Yet, I cannot get past the outright disgust over the needless waste of time and attention now devoted to what is in truth a moot issue, with probably the most critical election in decades quickly bearing down on us. Yes, supporters and donors were deceived. But so what? What is the end purpose in bringing all this up now? What exactly will it achieve?

The affair is over. He is no longer a candidate for either president or vice president. And it is not the first time — nor will it be the last — that a candidate or elected official fails to keep his (or conceivably her) pants zipped when they should.

Even had Edwards been the Democratic presidential nominee, I’m still not convinced the affair would have been anyone’s business save that of Ms. Edwards. Let’s face it — she was the only person wronged, and if she forgave him, who the heck are we to now publicly castrate him?

Six months have passed since he withdrew from the race. Today no one but Ms. Edwards had a right to even question him on such an inherently personal matter. She is courageously fighting quite literally for her life against terminal cancer, and I have no doubt that her husband’s initial denials of the past affair were done in hopes of sparing her this public shaming while she is summoning every possible ounce of energy to fight this ruthless killer.

Yes, one may legitimately argue that the indiscretion would have opened a personal vulnerability in the general election — but that very prospect is, perhaps, the most distasteful aspect of all in this sordid affair. Cheating behind a spouse’s back is never right. But let’s be clear: it is also almost never a matter that belongs anywhere but squarely and solely between those two individuals.

What’s more, marital indiscretion has no bearing on someone’s aptitude to lead a nation. If we suddenly were to purge from historical records every president who ever had strayed outside his marriage — including at least a few of our most effective commanders-in-chief dating all the way back to Thomas Jefferson — enough evidence exists to suggest that a stroll down the Hall of Presidents might be over in two blinks of an eye.

It’s time that we as a people move beyond our salacious obsession with what other people are doing in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Are we just not getting enough action of our own that we must so voyeuristically intrude into others’ lives? Don’t we have enough real and mammoth crises on our collective plate with which to deal at this moment in our nation’s history?

(An aside to my former media colleagues: If we insist on giving adultery such a prominent place in the national public forum, let’s at least confine it to that of the actual candidates who are still in the running and end the silly, incessant media campouts and hovering helicopters at the Edwards’ home.)

If we’re half the godly, decent and humane nation we pretend to be, we should be offering the Edwardses our prayers — not slinging figurative stones at them. C’mon, people. Enough.