Editor’s Note: Judy Bachrach writes for Vanity Fair and is the creator of thecheckoutline.org, an online advice column for friends and relatives of the terminally ill.

This, I know, won’t make me popular anywhere.

I don’t think it’s anybody’s business except perhaps his wife’s, what John Edwards was doing in his down time two years ago. I don’t think it disqualifies him for political office. Not even the presidency. And I don’t think it makes him “a Don Juan John” or whatever else the tabloids decide to throw at him.

I think having an affair with a really bad film-maker who now has a baby of uncertain parentage makes Edwards — and I’m sorry to have to be so blunt about this but it’s true — a guy exactly like most other guys. Especially the guys on CNN and Fox and the guys on the National Enquirer who are currently tsk-tsking their way into every one of Edwards’ pecadillos. That kind of well-worn strategy is known as protective cover, and the men who deploy it find it really effective at gaining not only ratings and readers, but also the damp-eyed gratitude of many a deluded spouse and girlfriend – often both, and simultaneously.

I know what you’re thinking: this situation was different from most instances of infidelity. Elizabeth Edwards was sick with cancer. She recovers, or thinks she does, and her husband goes out on the campaign trail and messes with one of the trillions of women who used to date Jay McInerney. What’s with Edwards, anyway? What possessed him to stoop so low? Why did he think such a scandal would never come out? How could a presidential candidate be so reckless, so thoughtless, and just plain stupid?

Because he’s a male pol, that’s why. Or as Edwards himself put it in a statement that was remarkable for its sudden stab at candor, “In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.”

That devolution was inevitable. What we demand of our national candidates is really pretty simple. We want them to be mass seducers. In other words, the very embodiment of the narcissism Edwards mentioned, with all that entails: lots of acclaim, lots of money, and legions of loving, loyal, and often lustful admirers. That, after all, is how politicians get elected. That’s what most men, even those who aren’t running for office, appear to desire. That’s their ticket to the big time. That’s how they win.

So why are we so shocked and horrified when they can’t seem to turn off the switch?

For more on wowOwow’s coverage of L’affaire Edwards: