Will Edwards be welcome in Denver after admitting he lied? No

The fallout from the John Edwards affair - he finally admitted on Friday to having had an extra-marital affair with his campaign videographer Rielle Hunter, having previously dismissed the National Enquirer scoop as "tabloid trash" - reached Honolulu at the weekend.

Barack Obama, holidaying with his family, was pressed by reporters to comment on whether the disgraced former presidential candidate, thought to have been earmarked for a senior position in an Obama administration, possibly attorney-general, would be attending the Democratic party convention later this month.

Obama said that he "thought" Edwards and his wife Elizabeth, who suffers incurable cancer, had already decided not to attend the convention in Denver. "If I'm not mistaken I think that... the Edwards family indicated that they probably wouldn't be attending the convention," he said. Very diplomatic - and doubtless very final when it comes to Edwards's political career.

As James Carville, one-time campaign guru for Bill Clinton, put it:
"Certainly, his political career is in shambles. It's not going to come back."

Edwards had confessed his affair with Hunter to Bob Woodruff, ABC's Nightline anchor and in a statement issued from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He said he had told his wife and family about his "very serious mistake" long ago, and added: "I had hoped that it would never become public." Hence his denials when approached by the National Enquirer about the affair.

But Edwards was adamant that he was not the father of Hunter's baby girl, saying that his relationship with her was well over by the time she became pregnant in mid-2007 (her daughter was born this February). He also denied allegations made by the National Enquirer that he was responsible for "hush money" payments made to Hunter and to a former campaign aide Andrew Young who came forward late last year, when the Enquirer began its investigation, to claim that he was the father of Hunter's child, not Edwards.

Edwards later conceded that friends or supporters might have sent Hunter money without telling him. However, the Enquirer was due to publish further allegations today - claiming that it was Edwards himself who orchestrated thousands of dollars worth of payments to Hunter; that he and Hunter carried on their affair throughout 2007; and that Edwards is the father of Hunter's daughter.

Fred Baron, a retired lawyer who was Edwards's former finance chairman, has told the London Times that he made payments to allow Rielle Hunter and Andrew Young - and Young's own family - to move "out of the spotlight" from North Carolina to Santa Barbara in California. Baron claims he acted without Edwards's knowledge.

Last word - for the moment - to Maureen Dowd, writing in the New York Times on Saturday. "The creepiest part of his creepy confession," she wrote, "was when he stressed to Woodruff that he cheated on Elizabeth in 2006 when her cancer was in remission. His infidelity was oncologically correct."

FIRST POSTED AUGUST 11, 2008