New York Magazine excerpts "Game Change", the book that's been giving Harry Reid such grief this weekend for his "no Negro dialect" quip. The excerpt deals with the destruction of the Edwards campaign, which as it happens, is as much about their personal (self) destruction as well.

If you read this blog (and even if you don't), you probably know most of the details of Edward's dalliance with Rielle Hunter. What you don't know is in New York magazine. The last soap opera I saw was Dynasty--yeah, its a lot like that.

No one in the Edwardses’ political circle felt anything less than complete sympathy for Elizabeth’s plight. And yet the romance between her and the electorate struck them as ironic nonetheless—because their own relationships with her were so unpleasant that they felt like battered spouses. The nearly universal assessment among them was that there was no one on the national stage for whom the disparity between public image and private reality was vaster or more disturbing.

With her husband, she could be intensely affectionate or brutally dismissive. At times subtly, at times blatantly, she was forever letting John know that she regarded him as her intellectual inferior. She called her spouse a “hick” in front of other people and derided his parents as rednecks. One time, when a friend asked if John had read a certain book, Elizabeth burst out laughing. “Oh, he doesn’t read books,” she said. “I’m the one who reads books.”

Snick. The piece falls neatly into place and we understand what was incomprehensible.

Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan, thus much of the criticism of the Edwards should be taken with a grain of salt--what Edwards staffer wants to cop to being part of the problem?

Yet most of it simply rings true for one simple reason--virtually all great enterprises are destroyed by the personal flaws of their principles.

Read it all.