If there really are two Americas, John Edwards lives in the one that you and I aren't allowed in. This story's a little stale, but it's illustrative of a larger point that you don't want to lose sight of: Whether they're liberal or conservative, every single person running for president is "a better person" than you are.

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards recently defended taking a lucrative book contract from a publisher controlled by Rupert Murdoch -- whose News Corp. empire Edwards has sharply criticized -- by insisting that “every dime” of his $500,000 advance went to charity.

Left unmentioned by Edwards, however, was that Murdoch’s HarperCollins paid portions of a $300,000 expense budget for the book to Edwards’ daughter and to a senior political aide, Jonathan Prince.

The sums paid to Cate Edwards and Prince, who are listed as co-authors on the little-noticed 2006 coffee table book, "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives," have not been made public but were confirmed by two sources with firsthand knowledge of the book deal.

Maybe if you run for Congress and make a name for yourself, you can get paid handsomely for a coffee table book that loses money, use the cash as a charitable deduction on your taxes and funnel some cash to your kids.

Unfortunately for me, my dad's a school board member -- my expenses had better not exceed $50 or I'd end up eating the rest.

Edwards' biggest problem isn't his stump speech, his positions on issues or his hair. No, his biggest problem is that he's obnoxiously wealthy. I've known some people who are quite well off -- not Edwards well off, but 7+ figures -- and not a one of them was as big a tool as Edwards comes off as.

The level of discourse in this political season would rise immeasurably if Edwards would just go away.