The Edwardses Keep Racing Forward

TO BETTER UNDERSTAND why John Edwards is still running for president despite his wife's recurring cancer, read "Saving Graces."

The memoir, written by Elizabeth Edwards, explains a lot about this couple.

Together, they are running for political office. Together, they are also running from deep family tragedy -- the death of their son, Wade, at age 16. He died in an automobile accident on April 4, 1996. In reading their family's story, it's hard to tell where one race begins and the other ends.

As a mother, I found this book painful to read, but impossible to put down. Elizabeth Edwards's grief is so sharp that it slices through the page to your heart.

But as a political observer, I also find it hard to read "Saving Graces" without noticing the frenetic new life she and her husband invented after their son's death.

John Edwards ran for the US Senate, then for president, and then for vice president as John Kerry's running mate in 2004.

Elizabeth Edwards had two more children, a daughter and son, who are now 8 and 6. She took on the daunting task of new motherhood in her 50s; they also have a daughter, Cate, 24.

Elizabeth Edwards also immersed herself in every aspect of her husband's political campaigns, all the time thinking how much Wade would have relished the adventure. The Edwardses are building an extravagant 28,200-square-foot dream house, west of Chapel Hill, N.C.

This is not a judgment on the way this family chose to deal with their loss. Still, the memoir reveals a desperate effort, especially on Elizabeth Edwards's part, to fill her life with anything -- speeches, travel, lofty goals for America -- that will fill the void left by her son's death. She never will; no mother could. But she will keep on running until someone makes her slow down.

That is where John Edwards could step in, or should. But, for whatever the reason -- her strong will, his strong ambition -- the two keep racing forward.

She was first diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of the 2004 campaign, but put off a public announcement until the election results came in. She was the decider then, and appears to be now as well.

As she explains in her book, she felt a moral obligation to the people she met on the 2004 campaign trail. "Lump or no lump, cancer or not," she writes, "I had to continue to talk to as many people as possible, debate whatever issue needed debating, and do what I could for those people. We could do it. It was only four more days. We had to do it."

Edwards has said that he waited to announce a second presidential bid until doctors gave his wife a clean bill of health. The prognosis changed last week, when Edwards called a press conference to announce that his wife's cancer had returned in incurable, but treatable, form. "The campaign goes on strongly," he declared. He reportedly offered to pull out of the race, but she insisted he stay in. At their joint press conference, she said the campaign "is not about John Edwards," but rather, about the country's future.

Elizabeth Edwards may believe that, but it doesn't look that way to everyone in the outside world. The most cynical pundits and radio talk-show hosts accused John Edwards of using his wife's illness strictly to garner political sympathy. That is a harsh conclusion I do not share. In a presidential campaign, any decision about a personal matter has political pluses and minuses, and striking the perfect chord is impossible.

At the same time, it's naive to say the campaign is about "the country" and not about John and Elizabeth Edwards. They are both pushing forward, almost as if they are afraid not to.

Or, perhaps they can proceed because nothing scares Elizabeth Edwards anymore. As she writes:

"I have sometimes talked about the strange gift that comes with the awful tragedy of losing a child. I had already been through the worst, I believed; we all had, and I had the gift of knowing that nothing will ever be as bad as that. The worst day of my life had already come."

As long as she is calling the shots from that perspective, her husband's presidential campaign goes forward. Only John Edwards can stop it.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/03/25/

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