May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Political ambition is a bigger compulsion than sexual desire, a surprise for the evolutionist if not for most people.

Two disgraced politicians are back in the public eye. John Edwards has re-emerged with the publication of his wife’s book “Resilience,” a primer on “facing life’s adversities,” and a federal probe into whether campaign funds were used to underwrite his affair with Rielle Hunter.

And Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, has pronounced himself, with no evidence, fit to mingle in polite society again. He was the subject of a cover story by Newsweek and writes a column instructing us on the financial crisis. Italian widows spend more time in mourning than do politicians who have shamed themselves and humiliated their families but can’t stand being offstage.

Not that much has happened since we heard Edwards admit to narcissism and, at the same time, demonstrate it by explaining on “Nightline” that his wife’s cancer was in remission when he cheated on her. Every once in a while a tabloid wonders whether he’ll ever admit that the child Hunter had is his. But otherwise, the world was happy to let John and Elizabeth Edwards live out their days in obscurity.

But this week they came back in a big way as Elizabeth embarked on a major book tour that puts her on the talk-show circuit and in the front window of Barnes & Noble.

Why bring it all up again? The wealthy couple doesn’t need money to pay their legal bills. Marriages don’t get sorted out on Oprah’s couch. John Edwards once blasted Bill Clinton for what his affair was doing to “his precious daughter.” His own children are now old enough to read and work the remote control.

Tainted Love

On “Oprah,” Elizabeth said it was “a complicated question” whether she’s still in love with her husband and dodged a question about the state of the relationship by saying neither of them is “out the door.” With a 28,000-square-foot house, you don’t need to get divorced to be separate.

Edwards writes that she vomited when her husband admitted in 2006 to having an affair. “He should not have run,” she writes with remarkable understatement.

Oh, but he did and with her full-throttle support. Edwards writes that she didn’t want him to drop out of the race the day he told her; that would raise too many questions coming so soon after he had announced. Yet she had another chance when she learned that her cancer had progressed to Stage 4.

Fatal Frown

Instead, the couple doubled down. Edwards summoned the whole press corps to North Carolina for what was expected to be an announcement he was dropping out. Instead, he said he was staying in with his wife’s backing. If Elizabeth had so much as frowned that day, it would have been fatal to his chances.

Instead, as ever, she sublimated herself to John’s ambitions. One of the more sympathetic spouses in politics, with a warm personality and sharp mind, she may well have been as good a lawyer as her husband had she kept at it.

Every year she appeared devoted at their annual outing to Wendy’s, where they recreated their first date over a double burger with fries.

If it weren’t for her saying how serious he was about the “Two Americas” at every turn, the YouTube video set to the tune of “I Feel Pretty” as John fluffed his bangs in front of a handheld mirror would have confirmed the niggling fear that under that smooth, Ken doll exterior was a Ken doll vainly trying to be serious. He had to have depths only she could see, or her first reaction to finding out her cancer had turned inoperable wouldn’t have been to call a press conference to extol her husband’s worthiness.

Knocked Out

As admirable as Edwards is, her book removes the fiction that she wasn’t in on the hoax, that she wasn’t aware that her husband was betraying their children who were far more exposed to public humiliation than if he weren’t running.

They also betrayed the process and their supporters, knowing that Hunter coming forward could knock them out of the primary and the general election if they got that far. What if he hadn’t been on stage in the debates? Hillary Clinton’s communications director Howard Wolfson argued that if Edwards’s affair had been known earlier, Clinton would have won the Iowa caucuses and the nomination. President Clinton or McCain anyone?

If Edwards is ever found wounded under mysterious circumstances, there are three blondes with understandable motives to harm him: his wife, his mistress raising a child out of wedlock and Clinton. The charge would be aggravated, but justifiable, assault.

Edwards’s Temperature

The only possible reason to write this book is to blame the other woman for seducing her husband (Hunter waited outside his hotel to tell him “You’re so hot”) and resume center stage.

No one, it seems, ever wants to leave the spotlight. Bristol Palin was back with a media blitz yesterday on all three network morning shows as she embarked on a tour about abstinence as the only “100 percent foolproof way you can prevent pregnancy” reversing her earlier position that abstinence is “not realistic at all.”

As long as she and her estranged fiance are battling it out on TV over birth control, we’ll be spared a tour about parenting.

Book or not, John Edwards is likely finished in politics, but maybe not Spitzer. New Yorkers are becoming more European and desperate. They are so unhappy with Spitzer’s successor, David Paterson, that more than 50 percent in a Marist poll said they’d prefer to have Spitzer back in the governor’s mansion.

(Margaret Carlson, author of “Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House” and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 7, 2009 00:01 EDT