The front page of The New York Post featured a photo of former Sen. John Edwards, with a headline, “Edwards admits affair. HE’S A LYIN’ CHEATIN’ NO-GOOD HYPOCRITE!”

Well put, I’d say, though I do think the North Carolina Democrat, who twice sought the presidency and was the 2004 nominee for VP, said something interesting while confessing he had had an affair — you know, the confession that came after months of denials to the press and after years of projecting himself and his fiercely loyal, brilliant wife, Elizabeth, who has cancer, as a model couple.

Slick and honey-toned, Edwards, the son of a mill worker, became a wealthy trial lawyer, then a senator who raged against poverty. But he has now destroyed himself as a public figure. How could he be so reckless?

Eva Mancuso, a politically active lawyer who’d been a prominent backer here, was dismayed that he ever thought the affair could remain a secret. “Does he not remember Bill Clinton?”

Thus I found one of Edwards’ comments about the affair so revealing: “In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.”

That’s why politicians are a danger to themselves. Examples include former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, he of prostitute fame, and corrupt former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, who told a sentencing judge, “Over time, a sense of entitlement and even arrogance developed.”

Edwards’ admirers here included Jack McConnell, a lawyer and Democratic operative.

Sure, McConnell says, the Edwards news shook him. “How can it not? … I thought he was different. I bought into it in a big way.”

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Weygand, who had deemed Edwards “extremely conscientious and trustworthy,” fumes, “You have people that are going to the wall for you. … Obviously there was a lack of respect for us by him.”

As a state legislator, Weygand earned a reputation for being squeaky clean. He became lieutenant governor and a congressman, then lost a Senate bid.

He knows about letting fame go to your head. “I fell into that same rut myself,” says Weygand, now a University of Rhode Island official. “It’s very easy with all the people fussing about you and the position you’re in, and reporters calling you at 7:30 in the morning. It makes you think you’re something special. The fact is, you’re not.… You have to kick yourself in the backside every once in a while.”

And while Weygand recognizes what Edwards is talking about, he doesn’t see it as a valid excuse. Weygand notes that Edwards, after having his heart-to-heart with Elizabeth, continued to “perpetrate a lie” on the public.

Housing Court Judge Angel Taveras, a former congressional candidate and an early Edwards backer, suggests it’s inevitable that the public will be disappointed by some politicians because their personal lives are, at least at first, unknown territory.

A saddened Taveras suggests that signing on with a politician is always a crapshoot. “You take the good with the bad, with the sense of you never know what they might say and do. … You do the best you can.”

I hope we can do better. Meanwhile, I feel sorry for folks like Mancuso, who put so much faith in Edwards. She was telling me the other day how excited she was to be an Edwards delegate in 2004 and to hear him speak at the convention. She was so proud of him. But right now, she said, “it just stinks.”

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com