Elizabeth Edwards decision is not just an important role for cancer patients, it’s a great way to have something that is truly lacking in main stream media- an intelligent conversation.
Ii is also the truth. Something else that has been lacking of late. And it may force the hand of those less truthful
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.
More on the flip
Elizabeth Edwards open decision to continue the race while she has a family and has an illness opened another can of worms not just for the republicans who are caught in a maze of lies...but for Democrats who equivocate to this day about Iraq, and funding it, and getting our military home.
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.
In other words, let’s start speaking the truth about the real costs of this war and punting the ball down the road for two years. Lets have a little honesty and stop calling anti-war Americans the far left. We’re officially the vast majority. OK?
So Elizabeth Edwards comportment then becomes a sort of anvil against which other candidates comportment will be smashed if they appear to do more than equivocate.
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.
John McCain's Straight Talk Express becomes a maudlin joke in front of Mrs. Edwards. Hillary seems to go where the wind goes.
The Edwards may bring a refreshing honesty to the table that no one can spin.
Link here : http://select.nytimes.com/...