posted on April 2, 2007 09:04:55 PM new
Elizabeth Edwards for President
By FRANK RICH
Published: April 1, 2007
ELIZABETH EDWARDS’S choice to stay in the political arena despite a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about Elizabeth Edwards. People admired her before she was ill for the same reasons they admire her now. She comes across as honest, smart and unpretentious — as well as both devoted to and independent of her husband. But we have learned a great deal about the political arena from the hubbub that greeted her decision. For all the lip service Washington pays to valuing political players who are authentic and truthful, it turns out that real, honest-to-God straight talk about matters of life, death and, yes, political ambition, drives “some people” (to use Katie Couric’s locution) nuts.
If you caught Elizabeth and John Edwards in the Couric interview on “60 Minutes” or at their joint news conference in Chapel Hill, you saw a couple speaking as couples chasing the presidency rarely do. When Ms. Couric gratuitously reminded Mrs. Edwards that she was “staring at possible death,” Mrs. Edwards countered: “Aren’t we all, though?” It’s been a steady refrain of her public comments that “we’re all going to die” and that she has the right to make her own choice to fight for her husband’s candidacy even as she fights for her life. There are no euphemisms or equivocations in her language. There’s no apologizing by either Edwards for the raw political calculus of their campaign plans. There’s no sentimental public hand-wringing about the possible effect her choice might have on her children. The unpatronizing Mrs. Edwards sounds like an adult speaking to adults.
Americans understood. A CBS News poll found that by more than two to one, both women and men support the decision to move forward. So do prominent cancer survivors in the media establishment, regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum: Tony Snow (before his own rehospitalization), Laura Ingraham, Cokie Roberts and Barbara Ehrenreich all cheered on Mrs. Edwards. But others who muse on politics for a living responded with bafflement and implicit moral condemnation — and I don’t mean just Rush Limbaugh, who ridiculed the Edwardses for dedicating themselves to their campaign instead of, as he would have it, “to God.”
No less ludicrous were those pundits who presumed to bestow their own wisdom upon the Edwards household as it confronted terminal illness. A Washington correspondent for Time (a man) fretted that “Edwards’s supporters, and surely many average Americans” will be wondering when his “duties as a husband and a father” will “trump his duty to his country and the cause of winning the White House.” (Oh those benighted “average” Americans!) A former Los Angeles Times reporter (a woman) who covered the 2004 Edwards campaign suggested to USA Today that “this is a time when they would want to be home together savoring every moment that they’ve got.” A Washington Post columnist, identifying herself as a fellow mother, faulted Mrs. Edwards for not being sufficiently protective of her children.
As Mrs. Edwards moves forward both to manage her cancer and to campaign for her husband, she’ll roil more of the Beltway crowd. In a political culture where nearly every act by every candidate and spouse is packaged to a fare-thee-well for the voters’ consumption, the Edwardses’ story by definition will play out unpredictably in real time, with a spontaneity that is beyond any consultant’s or media guru’s control. Here is one continuing familial crisis that cannot be scored with soothing music to serve as a Hallmark homily in an inspirational infomercial at the next election-year convention. The Edwardses’ unscripted human drama will be a novelty by the standards of our excessively stage-managed political theater and baffling to many in its permanent repertory company.
That’s one reason it will be good for the country if Mr. Edwards can stay in this race for the duration, whether you believe he merits being president or not. (For me, the jury on that question is out.) The more Elizabeth Edwards is in the spotlight, the more everyone else in the arena will have to be judged against her. Next to her stark humanity, the slick playacting that passes for being “human” and “folksy” in a campaign is tinny. Though much has been said about how she is a model to others battling cancer, she is also a model (or should be) of personal transparency to everyone else in the presidential race.
This is especially true in a campaign where the presumptive (or at least once-presumptive) front-runners in both parties have made candor their calling card: John McCain is once again riding his Straight Talk Express and Hillary Clinton is staking her image on the rubric “Let the Conversation Begin!” They want us to believe that they are speaking in a direct, unfiltered manner, but so far their straight talking, even without Elizabeth Edwards as a yardstick, seems no more natural than Cheez Whiz.
Senator McCain’s bus has skidded once more into a ditch since the Edwards news conference. He’s so desperate to find the light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq that last week he told the radio jock Bill Bennett that “there are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk.” Yes, if they’ve signed a suicide pact. Even as the senator spoke, daily attacks were increasing in the safest of Baghdad neighborhoods, the fortified Green Zone, one of them killing two Americans. No one can safely “walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi, without heavily armed protection,” according to the retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who delivered an Iraq briefing (pdf) to the White House last week.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign “conversations” with the public have not stooped to the level of Mr. McCain’s fictions. But they have been laced with the cautious constructions that make her stabs at spontaneity seem as contrived as her rigidly controlled Web “chats.” This explains why a 74-second parody ad placed on YouTube by a Barack Obama supporter had enough resonance to earn (so far) nearly three million views. Reworking a famous Apple Macintosh commercial from 1984, the spot recasts Mrs. Clinton as an Orwellian Big Brother by making her seemingly innocuous campaign catchphrases (“I intend to keep telling you exactly where I stand on all the issues” and “We all need to be part of the discussion”) sound like the hollow pronouncements of the Wizard of Oz rather than the invitations to honest interchange the words imply.
Since the Edwards storm broke, there have been unintended consequences for other campaigns, too. In an accident of timing, Judith Nathan picked the same day as the Edwards news conference to explain that she was only now, after six years in public life, correcting the inaccurate published record of the number of her pre-Giuliani marriages (two, not one). Juxtaposed with the Edwards headlines, the dishonesty unmasked by this confession looked even worse than it might have otherwise. In a less vulgar vein, the first major Democratic campaign event after the Edwards announcement, a forum on health care, prompted more than the usual sniping about Mr. Obama’s substance when his policy prescription lacked the specifics in Mr. Edwards’s plan.
The power of Elizabeth Edwards’s persona is such that the husband at her side will be challenged to measure up to her, too, perhaps even more so than his opponents. No one may be labeling him “the Breck girl” anymore (the subject of another popular Web video parodying his coiffure maintenance), but should his campaign prove blow-dried when he moves beyond health care, he’ll pay his own hefty political price for the inauthenticity.
Whatever Mr. Edwards’s flaws as a candidate turn out to be, he is not guilty of the most persistent charge leveled since his wife’s diagnosis. As Ms. Couric phrased it, “Even those who may be very empathetic to what you all are facing might question your ability to run the country at the same time you’re dealing with a major health crisis in your family.”
Would it be better if he instead ran the country at the same time he was clearing brush on a ranch? Polio informed rather than crippled the leadership of F.D.R.; Lincoln endured the sickness and death of a beloved 11-year-old son during the Civil War. In the wake of our congenitally insulated incumbent, who has given our troops neither proper armor nor medical care and tried to hide their coffins off camera, surely it can only be a blessing to have a president, whether Mr. Edwards or someone else, who knows intimately what it means to cope daily with the threat of mortality. It’s hard to imagine such a president smiting stem-cell research or skipping the funerals of the fallen.
Indeed, of all the reasons to applaud Elizabeth Edwards’s decision to stay in politics, the most important may be her insistence, by her very action, that we not compartmentalize the harsh reality of death and the imperatives of public policy, both at home and at war. Let the real conversation begin
--
_____________________
"There is more to life than increasing its speed." --Mahatma Gandhi
posted on April 3, 2007 05:24:43 AM new "Would it be better if he instead ran the country at the same time he was clearing brush on a ranch? Polio informed rather than crippled the leadership of F.D.R.; Lincoln endured the sickness and death of a beloved 11-year-old son during the Civil War. In the wake of our congenitally insulated incumbent, who has given our troops neither proper armor nor medical care and tried to hide their coffins off camera, surely it can only be a blessing to have a president, whether Mr. Edwards or someone else, who knows intimately what it means to cope daily with the threat of mortality.
It’s hard to imagine such a president smiting stem-cell research or skipping the funerals of the fallen.
It's also hard to imagine such a president and his courageous wife taking a position because it's a politically expedient maneuver. That kind of behavior is expected from candidates like Hillary.
posted on April 3, 2007 06:12:47 AM new
What is helen saying?
That it now appears the edwards will be using her illness to their political advantage/benefit??????
IF so, some have already made note of that.
Not going to work anyway....he's not going to be a top contender in the dem nomination process.
Best he go back to his ambulance chasing lawyering.
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on April 3, 2007 07:50:03 AM new
I posted how I took what you said.
That gives you the chance to say I was incorrect.
Of course, since you didn't I'll know that you did mean it the way I took it.
=====
And good luck? ROFLOL
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on April 3, 2007 09:56:59 AM new
"It’s hard to imagine such a president smiting stem-cell research or skipping the funerals of the fallen.
IT'S ALSO HARD TO IMAGNE SUCH a president and his courageous wife taking a position because it's a politically expedient maneuver. That kind of behavior is expected from candidates like Hillary."
This is plain English. Hard to imagine means not very likely. Jeez, Louise!
posted on April 3, 2007 10:13:30 AM new
What you imagine and what most of the rest of America imagines are two different things, thankfully. Just explaining in more simple English what Helen meant. It is so obvious that if the Edwards' were Republican, you would be singing a very different song.
"Of course John Edwards is still running for president.
Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, who announced last week that she has bone cancer, are ambitious, political people who have had their eyes on the White House for years.
As their public statements have made clear, Elizabeth Edwards wants her husband to be president as much as he wants the job---and she is not going to let cancer get in her way.
Critics ask: How can Edwards put his sick wife through a campaign? Please.
A presidential campaign is such a grueling, vicious and all-consuming grind that most husbands would not put a healthy wife---or their children, or for that matter, themselves---under the harsh microscope of a White House bid.
Political families are a different animal. For better and for worse, they look at every aspect of their lives through the lens of their political goals...
Now Edward's wife's cancer is being used to bolster his candidacy.
'One of the reasons I want to be president is to make sure every woman and every person in America gets the same kind of things that we have,' John Edwards said...
Edwards also told '60 Minutes,' 'Do not vote for us because you feel some sympathy or compassion for us.'
And he'll say as much, every time a camera shows him talking about his wife." ---Debra Saunders (http://PatriotPost.US/opinion/entrylist.asp?source_id=27)
posted on April 3, 2007 03:56:04 PM new
Some have no understanding of a strong woman who can think for herself and lead her life as she chooses to without always looking for approval from everyone else. Sadly they can only compare their own lives and not relate at all, assuming that others must be as they are so they become critical and judgmental.
posted on April 3, 2007 05:21:28 PM new
Elizabeth Edwards is going through the same thing that thousands of others in the US go through each year. The only difference is that the Breck girl is attempting to use it now as a stepping stone to the White House.
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.George S. Patton
posted on April 3, 2007 05:30:05 PM newthe only difference is that the Breck girl is attempting to use it now as a stepping stone to the White House.
Oh yeah I'll bet she's just pleased as punch for her cancer to return so she can use it to get to the White House. What a godsend I'll bet she figures this recurrence is.
[ edited by profe51 on Apr 3, 2007 05:30 PM ]
posted on April 3, 2007 05:55:33 PM new
You two (Bear & Linda) have a lot of nerve presuming to know what is in the mind of another person--one who has gotten very bad news regarding her health. Everyone has to make their own decision as to how to get through the crisis. There is not one way to do this, just as there is not one way to grieve. How could you know how and why they came to the decision they did. No one, even you two, has the right to judge how Mrs. Edwards lives what's left of her life. You are both so busy telling everyone else how to live, what to think, for whom we should vote. Just take care of yourselves in any way you see fit and let others make their own decisions. And, I'll repeat it.....if the Edwards were Republicans, your opinions would be much different.
[ edited by coincoach on Apr 3, 2007 06:22 PM ]
posted on April 3, 2007 06:11:27 PM new
"" Linda_K
posted on April 3, 2007 03:55:28 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FWIW - I don't see mrs. edwards as being at ALL like hillary. she's not COLD and hard.
Just another one of mingo's constant LIES. tsk tsk tsk""
Hey stupid I never mentioned Hillary ! So where exactly did I lie?
And what the hell is FWIWWIW ...some kind of muttering or mumbling...stroke symptom ?..or were you drooling again....
posted on April 4, 2007 06:29:12 AM new
Linda, That was not an outburst, it was stating my opinion---which is that no one knows what decisions they will make until faced with the situation. It is also my opinion that you are one of the most uncharitable souls I have ever come across. Of course,you also have the right to give your judgmental opinions and to criticize someone's choices simply because she is a Democrat. Would bet $100 your opinion would be quite different if the Edwards were Republicans. You are so transparent.
posted on April 4, 2007 08:00:47 AM new
It still doesn't change the fact that Bush is a pig, a liar, a murderer, a fascist, and an embarrasment to humanity. But of course, Linduh enthusiastically loves to roll in the feces of this.
[ edited by shagmidmod on Apr 4, 2007 08:08 AM ]
Americans support former Sen. John Edwards' decision to continue his bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination after his wife was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer — and by a margin of more than 2-to-1.
According to a CBS News Poll conducted in the two days following the couple's interview by Katie Couric on "60 Minutes" this past Sunday, 57% of those who were surveyed said Edwards is doing the right thing by continuing to campaign. Less than half as many — 24% — said he should have suspended his campaign or withdrawn entirely.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on April 4, 2007 08:29:28 AM new
Just pointing out that I can see, once again, what the left considers FAMILY VALUES.
His wife is dying of cancer....and he wants to be President. Which is MORE important to him? Gaining the WH. Sure she agrees ....she loves him. But what a cad, imo.
posted on April 4, 2007 08:37:35 AM new
Mrs Edwards is living with cancer. They both would like to see him as President. It's their lives and their choices and others have no control over how they choose to live.
posted on April 4, 2007 08:44:33 AM new
Running for the presidency and caring for and about his wife are not mutually exclusive. Again, many cancer patients in the same situation prefer to keep busy rather than give up and waste away. A positive attitude can often help a cancer patient survive longer and feel better, or at least have a dignified and useful end of life. Not to wish ill on anyone, but what if Laura Bush were in the same predicament? Would you expect George Bush to resign so that he could languish with his dying wife?
posted on April 4, 2007 09:05:30 AM new
"" Linda_K
posted on April 4, 2007 08:29:28 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just pointing out that I can see, once again, what the left considers FAMILY VALUES."""
YUP, a HUSBAND standing by a WIFE who has cancer WITHOUT handing her divorce papers...the REPUBLICAN family values.
posted on April 4, 2007 09:28:03 AM new
Oh I understand that NO liberal would EVER look to a liberal man's CHARACTER.
They didn't care about how low clinton's was and they don't now care that edwards has a DYING wife. tsk tsk tsk
Yep....so much for THEIR family values. The most important things in life take a BACK SEAT to their wrongly based PRIORITIES...and just will NOT allow ANY interference that will jeopardize their POLITICAL gains. tsk tsk tsk
The future will show us just how well mrs. edwards holds up. NONE of you know so quit pretending you do.....time will tell.
But the fact he's willing to put her through all that.....is nothing sort of pure selfishness.
posted on April 4, 2007 10:12:34 AM new
""Linda_K
posted on April 4, 2007 09:28:03 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh I understand that NO liberal would EVER look to a liberal man's CHARACTER.
They didn't care about how low clinton's was and they don't now care that edwards has a DYING wife. tsk tsk tsk"""
Dear stupid, Elizabeth Edwards IS dying, just like everybody else on the planet.
""""Yep....so much for THEIR family values."""
John Edwards didn't present her with divorce papers like a REPUBLICAN DOES!
""" The most important things in life take a BACK SEAT to their wrongly based PRIORITIES...and just will NOT allow ANY interference that will jeopardize their POLITICAL gains. tsk tsk tsk
The future will show us just how well mrs. edwards holds up. NONE of you know """"
NEITHER DO YOU !
"""so quit pretending you do.....time will tell."""
YUP! TIME WILL TELL>>>NOT YOU!
""""But the fact he's willing to put her through all that.....is nothing sort of pure selfishness.""""
HE ISN'T putting her through anything you uneducated rock brained illiterate freak.
SHE made HER decision.
It's too bad YOU think a husband rules his wife......maybe YOU needed that but an intelligent , strong woman like Elizabeth Edwards thinks for herself ...makes her own decisions........which she did.....a very brave one!
posted on April 4, 2007 10:42:47 AM new
Listen sybil....
....I've acknowledged that it was a joint decision. I've acknowledged that she loves him very much and I believe they have a GREAT relationship/marriage.
I've also pointed out that BECAUSE she loves him she would want to see him have what is very important to him. That's what LOVE is all about. Not selfishness.
What I see on HIS part is nothing but screwed up priorities. HIs wife is DYING and they have two very young children who need his TIME, ENERGY and attention.
He's selfish enough to put his own needs BEFORE her needs.
Justify it anyway YOU wish to.
That's MY opinion of how I see HIM and his decision to put HIS political career FIRST....ahead of hers and his childrens needs.
posted on April 4, 2007 10:56:32 AM new
Then you are in the teeny tiny minority of Americans.
Also: seems you APPROVE of handing divorce papers to your wife as she recovers from cancer surgery...so I guess you and the rest of your teeny tiny minority are screwed in the head >
(and nowhere else)
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