What Really Happened (10 page)

Fabulous.

There was plenty of room in the plane’s cabin, so I moved from my assigned seat that was multiple rows behind Johnny to one directly across the aisle from him. Johnny was pleased about that. You could feel Josh’s displeasure emanating from his aisle. Johnny clearly didn’t care what Josh thought. We arrived in Brussels without a hitch and with more than a few hours to wait for our connection back to JFK. Because it was the next morning, and we still had a very long flight ahead of us, Johnny showed me a place where I could take a shower, which I did, after he did.

I overheard Josh and Sam making fun of Johnny about this, behind his back of course, and I made the mistake of chiming in and said, “What’s so weird about taking a shower? I did.” Boy, did that shut them up fast.

This Africa trip pretty much sealed Josh’s fate. Forget that Johnny and I were in love, which was probably lost on Josh, but between the staffer (the one the boss is
not
having sex with) and the filmmaker (the one the boss
is
having sex with), did Josh really think that he would be the chosen one?

Josh took matters into his own hands and alerted the powers that be at the PAC about the “Rielle” problem. The kid took matters into his own hands because he thought he knew better. It’s so amazing to me that this happens in politics over and over again. These young people who worked for Johnny, who presumably believe he has the judgment to become president of the United States, simultaneously believed they knew better about what he should say, how he should dress, how he should behave, and what stand he should take on a given issue. They advised him on everything; they didn’t serve his intentions—they wanted him to serve theirs.

I believe that Johnny wanted to send a message to his PAC. He did not want to be their puppet any longer. He was in charge, which he claimed at the time stemmed from his days as Kerry’s running mate, but as you can probably guess by now, I think goes back even further. So Johnny took Josh aside in the airport before they were about to board a plane to China and fired him. Johnny told me that Josh had cried.

I later read in
Game Change
that Johnny and Josh had a screaming match and (according to Josh), Johnny said, “Why didn’t you just come to me like a fucking man and tell me to stop fucking her?” This is hilarious to me. I wasn’t in the room so I don’t know for certain what was said, but I seriously doubt this happened. The truth is that in 2006, for better or for worse, the John Edwards that I knew would have never confessed or confirmed our relationship to anyone, especially a twenty-something kid he was in the process of firing.

So Josh was axed, and it was clear within the PAC that most people knew why and a message was sent and received. I’m not entirely sure, however, that the message that Johnny intended was the one that was, in fact, received.

It was clear but, of course, never stated directly to me that the PAC now wanted to keep me away from Johnny. I remember being in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for two days visiting Johnny during his downtime, per his invitation. I was staying at the Marriott (he could visit) and checking my email from the lobby. There was an email from Nick Baldick stating something to the effect that everyone agreed that I was to stay home and edit and not go on the next Edwards trip, which I think was in Iowa.

In October, I also flew down to Asheville, North Carolina, by myself. I actually went there not just to see Johnny but to get an interview with him to tie the Uganda webisode together.

Elizabeth was speaking at a luncheon sponsored by
Ladies’ Home Journal
. And, ironically enough, in response to a question asked by Lisa DePaulo (who would interview me years later), Elizabeth claimed that her choices in life had made her happier than Hillary Clinton, that she was more joyful.

Elizabeth called Johnny in a tirade about it. She somehow blamed what she said on Kim Rubey and on
Ladies’ Home Journal
, insisting that the magazine had misquoted her and it was Kim’s fault that it had done so. The phone call to Johnny was about whether or not he thought she should she apologize to Hillary.

Nobody I know who heard about this incident believed it was Kim’s or
Ladies’ Home Journal
’s misstep. The consensus was that the incident was more likely to be the real Elizabeth shining through. Johnny’s sister Kathy later told me that for years Elizabeth would often call her to gloat about her wonderful life. The manner in which she did this often left Kathy in tears.

No matter what the intentions behind the comment were, I actually felt badly for Elizabeth. The ego frequently has a way of turning the joke right back on us. And the big problem with denial is that your false joy, your “ignorance is bliss,” will not last. The day will come when it will end. It’s inevitable. And the more you fight it, the more pain you create for yourself.

And unfortunately for Elizabeth, that day came sooner than she wanted.

EIGHT

The End of the Year

“If you make a choice that goes against what everyone else thinks, the world doesn’t fall apart.”

—
O
PRAH
W
INFREY

I
N THE MIDDLE OF NOVEMBER I went down to DC to stay with Johnny for two nights. He was doing an event at Borders, which I did not go to but remember noticing afterward that he had worn the first shirt I’d purchased for him to the event; it made me happy. He had gotten (via John Davis) take-out food for us from the Daily Grill for our dinner, which also made me happy. (John Davis was now in Josh Brumberger’s job, which made me
super
happy. No more dealing with Josh’s snide comments and passive-aggressive actions.)

That night, as we were eating dinner, a campaign disaster call came in. One of Johnny’s aides had left a message on a Walmart store’s answering machine requesting super-special attention for a PlayStation 3 for Senator Edwards. This was pretty funny (in a horrible way) because Johnny was waging a campaign against Walmart, mostly about how the company was unfair to its workers (my second webisode was about this issue). Johnny spoke to Rob Christensen, a reporter from the
News & Observer
,
while we were having dinner. Johnny told the reporter that the kid had made a mistake; he didn’t know Johnny’s views on Walmart. It was an honest mistake and in the news for a day.

Elizabeth was not about to let this one go, however. She believed that Andrew Young was behind it all, that he had told the campaign volunteer exactly what to say to Walmart and then convinced the kid to claim he had made the call all on his own. It was added fuel for her fire of hatred for Andrew.

Johnny told me that, before he and I met, Elizabeth repeatedly said that she believed Andrew was a thief and liar. She believed he spent a lot of their money on things they never saw. Money and other things went missing when Andrew was around, and now, no matter how innocent Andrew claimed to be about the Walmart fiasco, Elizabeth no longer believed him.

After the Walmart mess she began to harass Andrew with emails and occasional voicemails at all hours of the night. She wanted him gone. Coming from Elizabeth, though, this was a little like crying wolf. It wasn’t unusual behavior for her, so Johnny just chalked it up to more of Elizabeth’s craziness. Johnny would tell her to stop the harassment, even mentioning that eventually word would leak about the way she spoke to people and damage her saintly image. Elizabeth would then turn her wrath on Johnny. He was now defending a thief and a liar and taking Andrew’s side over hers.

Whatever Johnny said to her didn’t do any good. The harassment would just continue. According to Johnny, there was no talking to Elizabeth about something when she had made up her mind, and now she was out for Andrew.

From Johnny’s perspective, Andrew loved him and would move mountains for him, and Johnny is a very loyal person. He wasn’t going to fire Andrew just because Elizabeth had decided he was a liar and thief. Apparently this vitriol toward a staff person was a behavior pattern she had with anyone who got close to Johnny. So he ignored her.

What’s so sad about this was that Elizabeth’s instincts about Andrew were actually not far-fetched. If she had handled it properly, a lot of misery could have been avoided.

Johnny came to New York City in November to do
The Daily Show
and an event in support of his book
Home
. Sam Cullman and I rode in the car with him to
The Daily Show.
I used that footage to make the final webisode. We then went to a bookstore on the Upper West Side for a signing. Johnny was exhausted afterward; book signings drained him like no campaign event ever did.

Later, after our Serafina take-out dinner, watching the footage Sam and I shot in Uganda air on
Hannity and Colmes,
Johnny signed a bunch of books for me: one for Mimi, her sons Jack and Cole, my younger sister, Melissa, and one for me. By the time we got to my copy, we were in a too-tired, too-much-wine lovers’ spat. Inside he wrote, “My love—will you marry me?—I love you—your baby.”

He wrote that so I wouldn’t be mad at him any longer. I did not believe it was an actual marriage proposal, nor do I now. He was attempting to make me happy in the moment.

However, because I was madly in love with Johnny, that book became an important memento to me. Sometime over the next few weeks, I shipped that to a dear friend for safekeeping. Years later he shipped it back to me, which, in hindsight, was stupid. I should have had him keep it for the next fifty years because, sure enough, Johnny’s book with that inscription later vanished from my home.

In December, I had a meeting in DC with Johnny and David Ginsburg. This was the first time I had met David, who was the head of public relations for Johnny’s campaign. I was getting a ton of push back about putting the webisodes on the Internet. So we watched the webisodes with David, and then I left. I remember asking John Davis on the way out what train they were taking to New York. Johnny had told me to wait for him (something I did not reveal to John Davis) and get on his train. John Davis gave me some wrong information about their travel plans that didn’t involve a train, so I just hopped on the next train. Later, John Davis called me asking what train I was on. They were an hour behind me on the next Acela and he apologized for giving me wrong info. No worries—I was able to get home and shower before meeting Johnny later at the Regency.

Around this time I also had lunch at Serafina on Sixty-First Street with Lisa Blue, who had taken a real fancy to me, sending me her favorite book to read, offering to fly me to their Christmas party, etc. Fred dropped by for a few minutes and said hello. It was clear to me that Lisa had no idea about the extent of my relationship with Johnny but she did like how Johnny behaved around me. She said more than once that she believed I brought out the best in him. I remember Lisa also saying at this lunch how much she thought I could help Elizabeth who, in her eyes, really, really needed a lot of help. We also talked about Johnny running for president. I was unsure that he would ever announce and said so. Lisa was positive he was going to announce because his ego would not let him sit this one out. I got the sense that his running for president was something she wanted and needed Johnny to do. She would have a strong negative reaction every time I suggested that he might not actually do it.

Another big question going around then was whether the webisodes would ever see the light of day. Andrew had seen a copy of the webisodes and was over the moon about them. He called to tell me how great a job he thought we had done. He later started calling me to get me to one of Johnny’s supporters the footage because he wanted to edit a version of his own.

“Andrew, I can’t do that. I have a contract. I can’t just randomly give you or some guy I don’t know footage that the PAC has not approved for this guy to edit his own versions.”

I then heard about a meeting at which Elizabeth barked about how everyone was so dysfunctional and afraid of everything. She thought they should put the webisodes on the Internet
now
, even though she had never even seen them.

So thanks to Elizabeth, the webisodes finally got a green light, then I called Jonathan Darman from
Newsweek
(as per prior discussions with Kim Rubey) to publicize them. I had lunch with Darman at a restaurant that he picked.

Wow, did I get my ass handed to me for doing this. Apparently David, the guy I had just met, had a rule that I was not to talk to anyone in the media without his approval. Everything was to go through him. I apologized for my mistake but given I had only met him a few days ago, I didn’t really feel that bad.

I also flew to Texas in December and joined Johnny on part of his book tour. What a difference John Davis made as a travel arranger/companion—such a joy. The night after the book event, we all went out to eat with Fred and Lisa. Once again, she commented a few times how great Johnny was with me, how relaxed he was with me, and how well I understood him, which brought out the best in him. Lisa also called her nanny to bring their newborn daughter to dinner so we could meet her. I held her—she was so sweet. Johnny watched all this with rapt fascination, almost as if he couldn’t even imagine me with a kid. I love kids but I really had no idea how deep my love for children actually was, because I had never heard my own biological clock ticking.