Assessing John Edwards' Comeback Chances

John Edwards’ public image hit new lows the past week, but the likes Richard Nixon, Eliot Spitzer, and Michael Milken have made successful comebacks, the Atlantic notes, in polling political spin doctors about Edwards’ comeback chances:

• Bob Shrum: "The reality is so contrary to the image that he projected,” says the veteran of Edwards’ 1998 Senate and 2004 vice-presidential campaigns. “I regret that I was complicit in picking him.”

• John Weaver: No chance, says the Republican. His advice? “Buy a satellite dish and move to the island where the Bounty crashed in the South Pacific.”
• Peter Mirijanian: “The American public likes a feel-good story, they like a story of redemption,” the public-relations exec says, so make a beeline for Oprah. And Edwards must “do the one interview. And I think it has to be a visual medium. I don’t think the full-page story in the New York Times cuts it.”
• Anonymous: Wait until cancer takes away the constant reminder of wife Elizabeth. “I honestly don’t believe he can make a true comeback until well after Elizabeth has passed away,” says the you-can-see-why-he/she-wanted-anonymity consultant. “As long as she is alive, his comeback chances are dead.”

For more advice, check the link at right. (More John Edwards stories.)