Dean's World

Sitting on 102 secluded acres — surrounded by trees and defended by no-trespassing signs — the 28,000-square-foot estate that Edwards and his family call home has presidential privacy.

A main home has five bedrooms and six-and-a-half baths. It's connected by a covered walkway to a bright red addition known as "The Barn," that includes its own living facilities along with a handball court, an indoor pool and an indoor basketball court with a stage at one end. Nearby, the family has cleared space for a soccer field.

With a current building value of $4.3 million, the unfinished Edwards estate is already about $1 million more expensive than any other house in the county, according to tax records. It sits on land worth about $1.1 million.

Edwards first purchased the land in 2004, during his failed run as vice president. He recently sold his mansion in Washington's tony Georgetown neighborhood for $5.2 million.

Edwards, a former trial lawyer who made millions before winning a seat in the Senate representing North Carolina, has faced criticism regarding the estate. It also has become the subject of late-night jokes.

"Well, I think we know which America he's living in," Jay Leno quipped on NBC's "Tonight Show," a riff of Edwards' frequent mention of the "two Americas" — one for the wealthy and one for the poor.

That's the AP. I'm not sure Americans have a huge problem with wealthy presidents. They'd better not; there aren't too many other kinds of presidential candidates any more.

But it's something different here, for a few reasons:

• At $4.3 million in value for the house, it's hard to impress me from where I'm sitting right now, on New York's Upper East Side, where many apartments cost that much. But in his neighborhood, that's a monstrously large and ostentatious house, as you can see in the description above. In short: It's in bad taste.

• Edwards made a fortune practicing as a contingent-fee lawyer, mainly specializing in fetal distress malpractice claims against obstetricians. It's a line of work that is controversial. , though there's certainly disagreement as to how that would play out in a national election. When contrasted with "crime buster" Rudy Giuliani, though — a "public servant" lawyer who didn't make serious money in his government law practice or as mayor, though he made up for it later (albeit nowhere near the scale of Edwards's wealth) — the contrast would not flatter Edwards, despite the left-wing sour grape squeezers that will never forgive Giuliani for cleaning up New York.

• He's not a Kennedy.

No, I don't like John Edwards, though believe me — as a lawyer, I take my hat off to him. I don't blame lawyers for runaway juries; I blame the juries themselves as well as the judges (trial and appellate) and legislatures (largely in the pocket of plaintiffs' lawyers) that do not reign them in. Their obligation is to advocate and, short of cheating at it, which is reprehensible, they should and do play to win.

But I do believe that Edwards is very vulnerable on this score. Lawyers are not respected in this country, though the same people who scorn us call us the second they think we can help. Still, while people don't like government officials who are lawyers, either, that's a different flavor of disdain. It's good to be a good lawyer, and very good, even great, is best of all. But Edwards may have been too good for his own good, in terms of his political ambitions. The biggest jury of all will not be swayed on this one. John Edwards will have to settle for his own palace rather than the relatively modest white one on Pennsylvania Avenue where he wants to hang his briefcase.

I don't like John Edwards. It's not because he's a Democrat. There are quite a few Dems I like including Virginia's Jim Webb and Montana's Jon Tester. It's not because he ran under John Kerry, or drops more money on a haircut than I do on four years worth of them.

I don't like John Edwards for a multitude of reasons but the biggest by far is the fact that he made his fortune by suing doctors out of business. He blamed psychiatrists for the suicide of their patients, and cases of cerebral palsy on the obstetricians who delivered the kids suffering from it.

He ruined the lives of highly trained professionals, and preyed upon distraught families. His actions contributed to the exodus of physicians out of his state. In 2005 Sen. Elizabeth Dole noted that North Carolina, Edwards's home state, is one of 20 considered be in a medical liability crisis.

Women in underserved rural areas have been hit particularly hard by the loss of Ob-Gyn doctors leaving their states. The loss of even one Ob-Gyn can leave these women without critical and needed care.

“Right now, because Ob-Gyns are fleeing their practice, women are being denied access to this critical specialty. This means that women aren’t receiving preventive tests that can save lives, and pregnant women must travel great distances to have their babies delivered...

Yet in front of a labor group he demanded Americans sacrifice their SUVs while he owns 3 of the things. When asked to explain this hypocrisy, he did what any oily politician does: he ignored the question and trotted out Horatio Alger.

"I have no apologies whatsoever for what I've done with my life," he said to loud cheers. "My entire life has been about the same cause, which is making sure wherever you come from, whatever your family is, whatever the color of your skin, you get a real chance to do something great in this country."

John Edwards isn't just a hypocrite who lives in a house ten times the size of the average American's yet expects us to sacrifice for the environment. He's much worse - a righteous hypocrite who truly believes that it's okay for him to live in his mansion paid for by his ill-gotten albeit completely legal gains while the rest of us drive smaller cars and lower our thermostats. In his heart he believes that this wealth, accumulated by winning 50 cases with verdicts of $1 million or more - 31 of those for medical malpractice - is a shining example of what makes America great.

Forget Oprah working her way up from a small town in Mississippi, or Bill Gates using his keen business sense and technological savvy to build and eventually redefine an entire industry; John Edwards sued his way to success. Where men like Warren Buffett amassed a fortune through creating businesses, John Edwards made his by destroying careers and lives.

The only cold comfort I can take is the fact that he will unlikely never achieve his goal of becoming president of the United States. He may serve a Democratic president in a cabinet position, but he will never hear "Hail to the Chief" played when he enters a room.