The first questions many people want to ask Andrew Young about his best selling book, “The Politician.”

– If the John Edwards story you tell in your book was so bad and distasteful, why did you stay a part of it for so long?

– If the money and the promises of a powerful job were still there with Edwards, would you still be there, too?

– Are you just trying to get revenge on the Edwardses for their treatment of you?

Young is ready for your questions.

He has not dodged them as they have come up in multiple interviews. He quickly concedes his own grievous errors in assisting John Edwards in the attempt to cover up the Edwards affair with Rielle Hunter and his responsibility for their child.

He has conceded that he now “despises” Edwards and that, in addition to giving his side of the story, money to pay expenses and legal bills is a reason for writing the book.

Young’s detailed version of the Edwards-Hunter-Young saga and cover-up has forced us to come to terms with how close we came to having a presidential or vice-presidential nominee or election winner whose past deceptions would have made him subject to blackmail and disgrace.

Thanks to Young, the story about John Edwards has now been carefully reported. What has hardly been mentioned, and is perhaps more interesting, instructive and poignant, is Young’s story about himself.

For instance, there is the story of Andrew and his father, the Rev. Robert Young, who died last year as Andrew was finishing the book. Robert Young was one of North Carolina’s most popular religious leaders. In the pulpit he was a powerful and compelling preacher. He also had a positive concern for politics, and many of us thought he would someday by a successful candidate for high political office. He had, after all, been elected president of the student body at UNC-Chapel Hill.

But those expectations came crashing down when Robert Young’s affair with a parishioner broke up his family and his bright prospects for leadership in his church and political life.

Thus, Andrew Young knows first hand the kind of agony and challenges faced by children of much-admired fathers who are publically disgraced.

Young acknowledges that John Edwards may have become a “substitute” for his father and that “my commitment to him was like a son’s commitment to his father.”

There is more, though, to explain Young’s conduct, and it has to do with Young’s coming to terms with his father’s mistakes. Over time, his father worked hard to regain the respect of Andrew and others, and he persuaded them to accept a very bad mistake in light of his remorse and the many good things he did to redeem himself. “…if you want to understand how I could have aided and abetted the worst in John Edwards, it helps to know that I was also trying to grasp, as an adult, what it means to take the good with the bad. I had confronted my father, watched him seek redemption, and make peace with him. But I hadn’t developed a mature understanding of what I should do beyond accepting another person’s flaws and moving on.”

Young continues, “With my dad’s help, I know now the difference between understanding human nature – the combination of good and evil – and being able to love yourself and others through it all. I am genuinely sorry for all that I have done wrong and for all the hurt I have caused others.”

Young certainly understands that there will be skeptics who will wait to judge him until time proves the sincerity of his remorse. But everyone should acknowledge that he has taken an important first step.



D.G. Martin is hosting his final season of UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs at 5 p.m. Sundays. His blog and prior programs can be viewed at www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.