Q&A With Elizabeth Edwards: I've Never Been Good at Leisure
Over the past month, Elizabeth Edwards, the blunt and down-to-earth wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, has emerged as her husband's most potent campaign weapon. She appeared solo in his first ad in New Hampshire and has aggressively confronted conservative pundit Ann Coulter and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, all the while keeping an ambitious campaign schedule of her own, despite an ongoing battle with cancer.
In fact, Elizabeth Edwards has become such a force that her husband's campaign strategists are being peppered with questions about whether she has begun to overshadow the candidate. And some critics have suggested that the campaign is using her as her husband's frontline surrogate because her personal history (not just the cancer but also the 1996 death of the Edwardses' 16-year-old son, Wade, in a car accident) makes her difficult to confront. She told the Wall Street Journal last week that she is writing letters to her children to be read in the event of her death; her breast cancer is considered incurable.
During a campaign swing Saturday in Iowa, Edwards sat down with U.S.News & World Report to talk about campaigning, her battle with cancer (she takes a chemotherapy pill daily and receives periodic infusions), and her decision to take an active role in her husband's quest for the White House while raising two young children.
Some excerpts:
On how having cancer has defined her.
It may surprise people to realize that most of the day I don't think about the cancer. I don't have any symptoms, so there's nothing to really remind me until the people—generous people—reach out and say something. And usually they're hopeful stories, or some alternative medicine they want me to embrace. Do I wish it didn't define me? Absolutely. That's part of the reason to do this. If I sat home, the disease would be what the remainder of my days would be about. And I refuse to give them that. I really try—it gives me an opening, and I think Ann Romney (who has multiple sclerosis) has the same opening—to talk about healthcare generally because we're identified with debilitating or potentially terminal diseases. I hope that as it defines me I'm able to move that definition to not just my healthcare but healthcare generally.
On frequently being introduced as a brave woman, and whether she considers herself such.
No. I mean, what are my choices? It's not like I undertook this voluntarily. Brave people are the firemen who run into the burning building. That's brave. I'm in the burning building, you know. If I could've not been here, that's what I'd choose. What I've discovered as I go around is the people who are on the outside—both critical and complimentary—don't know enough faces of people who have conditions like mine. If they did, they would see the vast majority being, quote, "brave," saying that "I'm living my life; I'm moving forward." Almost everybody embraces life.
On criticism she's received for not staying home with her two young children, Emma Claire, 9, and Jack, 7.
Men get a bigger pass. John is going to be campaigning. Sen. [Barack] Obama is campaigning, and he has children. Somehow it's only when I was going to be campaigning that we start to examine whether, as a parent, this is the right decision. That's always been so. I started practicing law in 1977 and had my first child in '79. My entire adult life had that kind of scrutiny. I think part of it actually is ourselves [women]—scrutinizing ourselves and trying to come to grips with our changed roles. That part of it is actually healthy. The part that is meant to be sanctimonious or judgmental, that's obviously not healthy.
On how she has the energy to keep her schedule, be a mom, wife, and take care of herself.
I'm actually one of those people who get up energetic in the morning. And I have help. I freely admit I have help. I'm 58 years old, and it's not just that we travel, but I'm also older, and honestly, even when the kids were younger, if they took off running, I physically couldn't catch them. You want to come work for us? I need you to be able to run 100 yards, and I need to watch you. I have less energy than I did when I was a younger parent, although I was never really a young parent. I had my first child [Wade] when I was 31. But I was a more fit parent at one point. But now I have lots more patience. So it may be that I can't catch them in the park before they can get to the street, but I can sit with them for hours as they try to tie their shoe. There's a trade-off, I guess. I don't get frustrated before they get frustrated.
On what her typical week is like now.
Last week I was on John's poverty tour with him. Then I flew to Washington for a Planned Parenthood speech. Had dinner with Cate [the Edwardses' second child, who is a Harvard law student], and got up at 2:45 a.m. and worked on the speech. Gave that and left for Iowa. Had three women's house parties in Iowa and flew back to North Carolina on Wednesday. Wednesday was our oldest son's [Wade's] birthday, and we have this thing we do in our family, where because the person who's having the birthday gets all the attention, the person who's not having the birthday is feeling kind of left out and often grumpy and does things to try and destroy the birthday. So we figured out a strategy about this: If it's not your birthday, the birthday child gives you a present. So you have something to look forward to. Since we can't have a party for Wade, instead we'll go out and buy the presents for you that Wade would have bought for you. So the three of us went to a toy store in Raleigh and bought them probably more than one thing, to be honest. Went to a grocery store and bought flowers. Went to Wade's grave. Sang happy birthday, left the flowers, said our prayers. Drove back to Chapel Hill, changed clothes, got in the car. Drove three hours to Roanoke for a concert. I spoke, and John spoke. The children didn't want to get on stage and went to the back room to play "Guess Who" games. Then drove the three hours home. Thursday had the morning "off"—actually writing a speech. Went to see my parents, who are aging and live in Chapel Hill. Flew to Oklahoma. Did a fundraiser and gave a Friday morning speech at Compassionate Friends, a bereavement group. But honestly? It's the unpacking part that's the hardest. Suitcases from my last trip are sitting in my closet unpacked.
On Wade as a daily presence in her life.
I wish it were my analogy because it's so great: You lose a child, and people think there's a point at which you're going to get over it—you won't think about it as much. There was a time when I couldn't think of anything else. There was no room in my head for anything else. That's no longer the case. But if I'd lost my leg instead of my child, people would never say, "Are you over it?" But you learn to walk with one leg, and we have learned to walk without Wade. If you lost your leg, you'd never forget you lost it, every moment you'd know that was the case, and the same thing is true with us. He's got a part in both of our days, every day. The younger children—he's part of their lives, too. They can take a picture of 15 kids and pick Wade out at any age. We discuss him, honestly, in the same way we discuss Cate, who's off at school, because he is their big brother. Emma Claire used to not remember that she didn't know him, never met him. She said on Wednesday that she was real sorry she didn't get to meet him. She's now a little older and recognizing that she didn't know him. She wants things that were his. She holds on to the fact that he's her brother. I try to make certain that that's not an oppressive part of her life, but a positive part of her life.
On dealing with criticism of her husband, including his $400 haircut and a widely viewed YouTube video showing him fussing with his hair before a television appearance.
At first you can look at this stuff and think it's kind of funny. All of us have caught ourselves standing in front of a mirror too long. John was sort of stuck in the chair, obviously, in the YouYube thing. They hadn't started filming so you just keep fooling with yourself because you've just got nothing else to do. You can laugh about mistakes you've made. But at some point you've got to almost get angry and say, "We've got men and women dying in Iraq. We've got all of these struggles." At some point we start thinking about them and stop thinking about this nonsense. It's great that this process starts in states like Iowa, where people pay a lot of attention to the specifics. They're less likely to be swayed by something like YouTube. This is a very informed electorate. These are people who pay attention. And that's good for us.
On what she would do if everyone on every campaign got to take a day off.
I think that it would be easy to say that it would involve real leisure, sitting and reading. I'm not very good at leisure. I've never been good at leisure. A young man has been helping us build paths on our property through the woods down to the creek. If I had a day and everything had to stop, I would rent a mulcher and get the kids to go out, and we would get the fallen trees that are on parts of that path, and we would mulch and put them on that path. And maybe plant some things. I've got some funny face things, some noses and eyes that you put on trees. I bought them for each of the children. So we'd go out in the woods, find a tree, and put them on. If I get to do the day and not John, John's grilling out. And if Cate's home, maybe she's cleaning up.