There's one thing about the whole $400 haircut business I'm going to find difficult to forgive--at least until John Edwards asks for forgiveness

"In the days after the $400 haircut first caused a stir, [hair stylist Joseph] Torrenueva did not give many details about his client to reporters who called or came by his Beverly Hills salon. But Torrenueva says he was hurt by Edwards's response to all the flap.

"'I'm disappointed and I do feel bad. If I know someone, I'm not going to say I don't know them,' he said. 'When he called me ''that guy," that hit my ears. It hurt.' He paused and then added, 'I still like him. . . . I don't want to hurt him.'"

--from John Solomon's follow-up report on John Edwards's famous $400 haircuts in today's Washington Post

For four decades, Joseph Torrenueva has cut the hair of Hollywood celebrities, from Marlon Brando to Bob Barker, so when a friend told him in 2003 that a presidential candidate needed grooming advice, he agreed to help.

The Beverly Hills hairstylist, a Democrat, said he hit it off with then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina at a meeting in Los Angeles that brought several fashion experts together to advise the candidate on his appearance. Since then, Torrenueva has cut Edwards's hair at least 16 times.

At first, the haircuts were free. But because Torrenueva often had to fly somewhere on the campaign trail to meet his client, he began charging $300 to $500 for each cut, plus the cost of airfare and hotels when he had to travel outside California.

Torrenueva said one haircut during the 2004 presidential race cost $1,250 because he traveled to Atlanta and lost two days of work.

"He has nice hair," the stylist said of Edwards in an interview. "I try to make the man handsome, strong, more mature and these are the things, as an expert, that's what we do."

Now, to begin with, my perspective on this whole haircut business may be different from other people's. There may be people who hate getting a haircut worse than I do, but I don't know them, and I don't think I've even read about them.

There isn't anything about the process that I don't hate: the weeks and months of anticipation after it becomes clear that it has to happen soon-ish, the actual waiting in the barber shop, the desperate attempt to describe to the barber what it is I want (as if I knew), the helpless time of sitting while the deed is being done (not only trying to adjust the head to each desired new angle, but in some cases having to respond to attempts at conversation), the futile moment of inspection of the more or less finished product in the mirror which I can't see without my glasses anyway (and just would what I say? "Nah, let's start over"?), the "finish up" fussing (final snipping, brushing, vacuuming, spritzing, etc.), and finally the paying-and-tipping.

All for that moment of relief when the realization swells: "It's done, thank goodness." Okay, so there's that one part of the ordeal I like, the part where it is, thank goodness, done.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me note that I got a great haircut once. I was taken--literally taken, as I recall--by a friend, someone immersed in the rock and pop-culture world, to an unassuming genius who gave me an utterly un-rock-like haircut (he had actually asked me all sorts of questions about my life), which not only looked good but fell naturally with virtually no maintenance for weeks afterward.

Even the price wasn't exorbitant by the standard of what other people were paying. Of course, in my mind those other people were all named Rockefeller. I could have gotten three or four, maybe five, of my usual crappy haircuts for what this one cost. Then I was too rattled to ask my friend how to find the genius again. By the time I did, his brief period of entrepreneurship had ended. I don't think my friend even knew where he was.

That can't have been more than 30 years ago--not much more, anyway--and just because it hasn't happened again, that doesn't mean I have absolutely ruled out the possibility that one day I might get another good haircut. After all, if we could put men on the moon blah-blah-blah.

The last time I bowed to the inevitable and went to submit myself to the ordeal at what has become, by some process of default, my "regular" barber shop--in a subway station--I found that it was gone!

All of which is by way of saying that if John Edwards found a barber--okay, hair stylist--he was comfortable with and who managed to fit him into his crowded schedule, and if the haircuts were affordable (to him, of course, affordability being inherently subjective), then $400 a pop might actually have been a bargain. Of course, assuming that Edwards harbored any future political ambitions it's unforgivable that none of "his people" appreciated the ticking time bomb those haircuts represented once they became public.

And it was inevitable that they would. After all, apart from cold, hard cash, is there anything more crucial to a big-time political campaign in the Age of Rove than "oppo research."

Solomon writes:

When Edwards' campaign reported in April that it had paid for two of his haircuts at $400 each, the political damage was immediate. With each punch line on late night TV his image as a self-styled populist making poverty his signature issue was further eroded.

Edwards said that he was embarrassed by the cost and that he "didn't know it would be that expensive," suggesting the haircuts were some kind of aberration given by "that guy" his staff had arranged. His wife, Elizabeth, made lots of jokes at her husband's expense and the campaign wished the whole issue would go away.

One thing that to me is not forgivable, at least not until the perpetrator asks for forgiveness, is the "that guy" business. I understand that, in the face of the public furor, Edwards panicked. But now that we know that he had a long-standing relationship with "that guy," his behavior strikes me as . . . as . . . well, as the sort of thing one would expect from George W. Bush.

And this isn't speculation. Remember when his old pal "Kenny Boy" Lay began to be pelted with debris from the Enron implosion? Karl Rove may have been the architect of the Bush ascension to the presidency, but Kenny Boy was the banker, taking account of not just the money he and his company shoveled into the cause but the loot that he shook loose from his cronies, fellow visionaries of a world of unfettered crony capitalism. That vision largely came true, but of course it couldn't save Kenny Boy.

But the worst of it came when that pile of pus and puke Tiny George rose to the full height of his vileness, ignorance, and lack of principle and claimed that Kenny Boy wasn't his friend, was barely an acquaintance--and fobbed him off as Ann Richards's friend.

It was a shocking moment, even by the low standards we had learned to set for this creep even back then. But in retrospect it should have told us everything we needed to know about him: a creature without a cell of decency anywhere in his toxic carcass, lacking even the baseline human quality of loyalty to his friends.

If anyone is inclined to suggest that Chimpy the Prez has shown loyalty in the lengths to which he has gone to protect Karl Rove, I would suggest that it has nothing to do with actual loyalty and quite a lot to do with self-preservation. History suggests that it's all but impossible to "get" Karl Rove; so far, at least, he has always slithered out of every death grip he's been caught in. And history tells us that there is no limit of any kind to the tactics he will employ when he needs to. I think even the Chimpster understands that a cornered Karl is likely to turn deadly. If Chimpy doesn't do everything in his power to protect him, the happiest fate he can hope for is to live out his days in prison--where Karl, having undoubtedly saved his own hide, probably won't even visit him.

There's a lot I like about John Edwards, who talks about issues that most presidential candidates don't. But this I don't like at all. I have a feeling that he doesn't either, that he knows this isn't how you treat someone with whom you've had an honorable professional relationship, perhaps even a friendship, over a period of years. I understand the fear of giving "them" an even more incriminating sound bite to use against you.

But when I listen to candidates prattle on about what they claim to believe, and I try to figure out what they actually believe and what they're prepared to fight for as president, then I have to remember John Edwards dismissing Joseph Torrenueva as "that guy."