charles pierce on john edwards

The current issue of Esquire has a cover story by Charles Pierce on John Edwards, my favored candidate: how he's changed since his 2004 campaign, how the mainstream narrative about him is constructed, and the political context in which it operates (can you tell I went to a liberal arts school?). Here's a passage that doesn't mention Edwards at all:

The important thing to remember is that toughness is a semiotic dumb show now. In that same debate in which Mike Huckabee flexed for the camera, John McCain pointed out that in his experience, which is considerable, torture doesn't work. On this, he was disputed by a former mayor of New York, who once was tortured by the thought that his second wife would not vacate the mayoral digs in favor of his second mistress, and the former governor of Massachusetts, who once was tortured by the fact that gay people were getting married. Toughness was now a performance skill in a cowardly country taught to fear the best things about itself.

A candidate's actual biography doesn't matter; George H. W. Bush flew fighter planes when he was a teenager, and he couldn't overcome the "wimp factor" against Ronald Reagan, whose primary combat experience was battling his way to the bar at the Brown Derby. In the three major national elections of his life, George W. Bush, who couldn't find Alabama while he was serving in the National Guard, defeated three men -- Al Gore, John McCain, and John Kerry -- who had volunteered to go to Vietnam, and he did so by out-butching them. Kerry's awkwardness in hunting clothes somehow trumped Bush's fear of horses.

Wikipedia identifies Pierce as a sportswriter, which is puzzling to me because I know him primarily as a political writer and secondarily as a panelist on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. I guess Keith Olbermann is a sportscaster, too. Did you guys see his "go there and fight your war yourself" commentary?