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Edwin W. Edwards’ final act

Enjoyable profile of the octogenarian lizard, out of federal prison, married to a smokin’ hot babe, and enjoying hisself. Excerpt: There are no more elections for Edwin Edwards, but there is a final campaign, and he seems to be running for the thing every politician craves: the way a crowd makes you feel, how it […]

Enjoyable profile of the octogenarian lizard, out of federal prison, married to a smokin’ hot babe, and enjoying hisself. Excerpt:

There are no more elections for Edwin Edwards, but there is a final campaign, and he seems to be running for the thing every politician craves: the way a crowd makes you feel, how it can polish achievements and push failures into the shadows. Many get into the game for that feeling, and then they convince themselves — and everyone around them, if they’re good — that there are other reasons to want such power.

That’s what’s wonderful about watching this journey. There’s no artifice, no hollow stump speeches and hot orations about people’s pain. There is only the naked, earnest search for love, and that makes this the most honest campaign ever run in the state of Louisiana.

There was another cartoon in the Times-Picayune recently. It showed Edwin and Trina, and the governor had two fingers raised on his hand.

“V for Victory?” one character asked.

“Viagra,” another replied.

Edwin saw the cartoon and laughed. Trina laughed, too, and Edwin said, “I don’t need Viagra …Viagra needs me. Doesn’t the Times-Picayune know they use my blood to make that stuff?”

He is an 84-year-old felon, a former congressman, and four-time governor of Louisiana. He is a new husband, and he has a book to hawk. He’s done time and managed to put more than a billion dollars in the bank for Louisiana’s children. In this final act, there is joy in the house of Edwards, and he feels it everywhere he goes, from small-town parades to the BCS National Championship Game, where his Tigers will play and where he, no longer inmate 03128-095, will get to see it live.

It’s fun to think about EWE and to enjoy his colorful demeanor now that he’s no longer a threat. It wasn’t so funny when the man ran the state, and, along with his one-time opponent David Duke, was a living symbol of everything that was wrong with our politics.

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