The Amazing Elizabeth Edwards

I wasn't going to focus really on politics or the Election at all today (besides to mention in passing how proud I am of the University of Iowa for keeping their dorms closed on Caucus night to enable their students to spend more time with their families, something that they'll cherish forever, that Ambassador Wilson is a wise man, and some people aren't acknowledging their flip-flops) but Slate had a profile of one of my favorite people, such a strong brave and amazing woman, Elizabeth Edwards. Here are some illuminating passages ( and in its entirety at Slate)

the Edwards place is 28,000 square feet if you include the squash court, with ceilings as high as in some actual cathedrals, and a fireplace in which one could roast a spitted ox. Honestly, if Elizabeth wanted to sit by an indoor waterfall or watch ballgames in her very own stadium out back, who could begrudge her? But this trophy home is at odds not only with her husband's campaign message, but with the way she herself comes across. I would have said it wasn't possible to love both Henry James and a house that could be a Marriot

"I wish my makeup looked like that," she says in greeting, having blown off putting hers on so we'd have more time to talk. In a plum pantsuit and stocking feet, with just a speck of green glitter under one eye from whatever do-it-yourself project she's been up to, she draws one leg up on the couch beside her, and chin on palm on knee, settles in to talk about the recurrence of her cancer—which she feels her husband's rivals are trying to use against him—and her 30 years of marriage to a man "who turned whatever harebrained idea I had into action." Though no more harebrained—or hairbrained, for that matter—than Hillary Clinton, she usually underplays her political savvy, casting herself as the dreamer and her husband as the doer: "That's what makes us a good pair; he gets bored, honestly, just thinking about a problem, and that's why he was so frustrated in the Senate.

he bemoans the fact that the long hallway that connects the main house to the rec complex adds a couple thousand square-footage to the total. The whole point of the campaign, she says, is that John wants everyone to get a fair shot at their dream house—via affordable college, available health care, and decent-paying jobs. Mind you, Republican presidential aspirant "Mitt Romney has tons more money and people don't complain." Nevertheless, "I'm not going to argue I don't have a nice house," she says, but then does: "You've been in our house; you don't say it's exceedingly grand, you say it's exceedingly comfortable. This is not a mansion in the clouds, it's a house where you can come and bring the dogs." Why can't others see it as she does, she wonders, "More as a love story than a macho, muscle-flexing" exercise in look-at-my-big-ol'-house? "I found the land before I had cancer, I drew the house up, and he let me build it."

When I suggest that we mostly wonder why he'd do that in the middle of a presidential campaign, knowing he'd be criticized for living in the wrong half of the Two Americas he talks about, she asks, "Wouldn't that have been worse, really?"—to refrain from doing so just for the sake of appearances? Worse as in more hypocritical? Yes.

friends insist that their 102-acre spread is actually 100 percent Elizabeth, whose husband doesn't any more mind where they live than he does where they buy their clothes (Ross: Dress for Less) or household goods (Target) or celebrate their wedding anniversary (Wendy's). No, the house was all her, trying to provide every conceivable amenity for her kids now, in case she isn't around to shop for them later. It was her, putting their money into what they both value most: not cars and jewelry, but home and family. And by her own account, it was her compensating for the succession of modest homes she grew up in as a Navy brat: "From years of living in military housing, I like a big room," she says, and recalls how some of the bedrooms she had as a kid were so dinky you couldn't even fit the bed in and still close the door all the way. "My dream was to turn in circles if you wanted to." So if there are contradictions on display, she says, they are her own and not her husband's. Which is her position always, as arguably the most protective spouse on the presidential block, a woman who, particularly since the death of their 16-year-old son, Wade, in 1996, instinctively tries to get between her husband and incoming fire: "Blame me, don't blame John," she says, even if in this we never seem to follow her advice.

the match was not immediately recognized as one between equals; she was a phenomenon from the first day, and he was shyer, more soft-spoken. He was small-town, she'd lived all over the world; he was straight out of college, she was four years older; he was completely practical, she loved theory; and he read thrillers, while she read everything but. As their daughter Cate, who is in her second year at Harvard Law, puts it, "She had been out with all these superintellectual grad-school guys who were rather cynical, and he was so hopeful it seemed naive to her at first. But he ended up making her happier." There is no question that today, she really is, as her '04 traveling aide Ryan Montoya puts it, "In my eyes, just like a mother in everything she does. She and my mom have a lot in common. Once, my pants ripped and she said, 'Get me a needle and I'll fix it.'

But her toughness and mommy-lion ferocity are less widely recognized. Though she and her husband do have some open philosophical disagreements—over gay marriage, for instance, which she's all for—and spar regularly over his habit of taking off for a run just as dinner is served, her feelings for him have never seemed the least bit conflicted. On the contrary, she is on his side with a vengeance, and by all accounts harder on staff than the candidate himself is, never over her own status as a principal, but over how her husband is presented and represented. Though I haven't asked, their law-school friend Glenn Bergenfield volunteers that, "She makes some very hard judgments on the people side. It's very hard for me to imagine John firing anybody from the campaign. He's a fighter pilot, but not hard on people, and I can't imagine him ever saying, 'You're not doing a good job,' whereas Elizabeth can. She's the mother of America, but also expects that when people say they're going to do something, they do it."

She also shows annoyance at some of the reaction to the recurrence of her cancer. Her husband's supporters have always seen her as proof of his depth and substance, and detractors as his literal better half. But since her cancer came back last March, her health and their partnership have become even more central to the question of what an Edwards White House would look like. Sure, "We're all going to die," as she told Katie Couric on 60 Minutes. But as anybody who's had cancer—and I belong to that not-very-exclusive club—can attest, reminders of mortality can send even some lifelong friends diving under the furniture. A blogger on the Web site Jezebel laid out the concern bluntly: "Say Edwards wins, and Elizabeth dies two years in. I cannot imagine the strain of mourning your spouse, caring for your children and being president of the U.S."

This is the kind of talk that really pisses off the candidate's wife, who was in any case weary of her status as Saint Elizabeth: "I've got enough reconnaissance to know where some of this is coming from, and it's not all from people who are concerned." Though no such links have been proven—and of course, they almost never are—she suggests that her husband's rivals have been push-polling on her health in Iowa, and that voters often tell her they've been warned by supporters of other campaigns that because of her, her husband isn't in the race to stay.

To which she has a few blunt objects to toss in response: "One, he's already been through the worst, and the loss of a spouse is not as devastating as the loss of a child. Nobody else—John McCain, I guess—has been tested the way John has, and all of our greatest presidents have had staggering causes for grief. Lincoln, Kennedy, Jefferson, our great presidents, almost always had personal tests." Besides which, "There's no reason to believe—John just heard about a new treatment, and bless his heart, is calling doctors to find out about it—but my protocol is working now!" And if that changed, she knows from watching him after Wade died that his reaction would be to try to "turn the turmoil into something positive." That's what led him into politics in the first place.

Even after finding a lump the size of an egg in her breast in 2004, Elizabeth decided not to tell her husband right away. It was 12 days before the presidential election, and one of her worries was that he would insist on attending to her at the expense of the campaign. Another was that if anybody found out why the vice presidential nominee was distracted, he'd be accused of trying to capitalize on the situation. That particular concern—that the reaction of the press to a woman with breast cancer would be to suspect her mate of milking the situation—doubtless says even more about us than it does about them
After Wade died, she'd promised herself he would never have to hear bad news again. Not if there was any way she could spare him.

This year, on their 30th anniversary, they renewed their wedding vows in a private ceremony out back. What their union most suggests about the kind of president her husband would make, she says, pulling her hair off her face, is that "with John, you say the good things and the bad things; that's the interaction in our family and home, so you could expect a high degree of candor" from him in the White House.

And I believe Elizabeth when she says the main effect of her cancer recurrence on her husband is that it's made him more himself—more driven and impatient, because the country and the planet don't have all the time in the world, either: "This isn't anger, it's urgency about where we start as a country, and clarity about where the problems lie.”

She is so strong and inspiring and amazing. I love her so much... I hope I can be like her when I'm older....

SO even if you’re somehow on the fence about John, Vote Elizabeth! (America's Mother)
[Here's a follow up]
(and here is Seamus Heaney' "The Cure at Troy" that I think the author was referencing)

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

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