John Edwards is on trial. Whether he is convicted will pivot on whether or not the money paid to his mistress amounted to illegal campaign contributions.

But this is a little bit like going after Al Capone for income taxes. It's trivial compared with the other deeds he did.

Edwards' wife was dying of cancer; his mistress was pregnant with his child; she was threatening to go public; he was paying her hush money; the story was starting to come out; and still he was striving to win the Democratic nomination for president, knowing that his secrets would destroy the hopes of his party if he became the nominee.

To refresh our memories, a timeline:

In 2006, Edwards, planning to run for president, met Rielle Hunter and hired her to do Web documentaries that were posted on his website. At the end of 2006, Edwards officially announced that he was running for president, telling George Stephanopoulos that, unlike President George W. Bush, he would be open with the American people.

In March 2007, Elizabeth Edwards announced that she had incurable cancer. A few months later, John Edwards impregnated Rielle Hunter.

In December, two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, in which Edwards was in a three-way fight for first place, the National Enquirer broke the story, showing a photograph of Hunter pregnant: "The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that Rielle Hunter, a woman linked to Edwards in a cheating scandal earlier this year, is more than six months pregnant — and she's told a close confidante that Edwards is the father of her baby!"

Edwards denied it all.

On Jan. 3, 2008, Edwards finished second in the Iowa caucuses.

A few days later, according to the book "Game Change," Edwards sent a private message to the Obama campaign, offering to drop out of the race and endorse Barack Obama if Obama pledged to pick him as vice president — a deeply creepy offer. Had Obama accepted it, it would have poisoned his chances for the presidency.

On Jan. 30, after poor performances in South Carolina and Florida, Edwards ended his campaign — but not before sending another offer to Obama to endorse him, this time in exchange for a nomination as attorney general. Obama rejected it.

On Feb. 27, John Edwards' baby was born. On her birth certificate, the space for the father's name was left blank.

Edwards was a man of hopelessly weak character. How did he fool people for as long as he did?

We tend not to have very honest analysis of character in our political discourse. What passes today for discussions of character are often just partisan attacks — with very few people willing to acknowledge strong character in their opponents or weak character in their allies.

And discussions of character, if they ever go beyond partisanship, are usually shallow. They're restricted to simplistic obsessions over personal flaws — how many "thou shalt nots" have you violated. It's the easiest and most obvious analysis, so it tends to dominate the discussion. But by this measure, we can't assess someone's character until he gets caught, and then it's too late.

Also, judging character by counting flaws is like evaluating someone only by assessing weaknesses. But strengths are a central aspect of character — what goals you have, what you value above winning, what you do with the power of your office to help the people who put you there.

Gary Pearce, a longtime North Carolina political consultant and a strategist for Edwards' 1998 U.S. Senate campaign, recently told The Washington Post that he saw Edwards one month after he became a senator, and Edwards asked him, "How do I get on Al Gore's shortlist for vice president (in 2000)?"

This says as much about Edwards' character as the Rielle Hunter story. He was so desperate for power that he was willing to endanger everything he claimed was his cause. Yet he didn't seem eager to do anything with his power but use it to get more.

We should have been able to figure him out before we did.

Tom Rosshirt was a national security speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and a foreign affairs spokesman for Vice President Al Gore. Email him at [email protected]. To find out more about Tom Rosshirt and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.