The Great White Hype

People are talking about John Edwards’ decision to continue his bed for President in the wake of his wife’s recurrence of breast cancer, which has now metastasized. Interestingly enough, cancer patients with their firsthand knowledge have expressed all different opinions. Some say he’s power-hungry and selfish to put his ambition in front of his devotion to his family. Others say that his life will have to go on, even if his wife passes away. Still others say he is exploiting his wife’s illness to revive his trailing candidacy. Most uncomfortable of all, many are practically writing Elizabeth Edwards’ epitaph.

I’m no doctor, of course, but personally, I don’t see a particularly positive outlook here. Stage IV metastatic cancer is as high as the meter goes. Somehow I doubt that Mrs. Edwards will have the long survival of former first lady Betty Ford and former second lady Happy Rockefeller, both of whom were diagnosed over 30 years ago. Instead I see images of Michael Landon on the Johnny Carson show a few days after he announced that he had pancreatic cancer. Three months later he was gone.

It’s not up to me to say if the Edwardses made the right decision or a wrong one. I’m not a cancer patient myself, but I’d imagine that the issue of mortality and the future has to be discussed among the affected family, no matter how painful it is to speak about. A few other pertinent factors: 1) John Edwards knew he wanted to run for president even before his wife’s diagnosis. 2) The nature of the disease is to move around. 3) This couple seems to be close.
4) They are clearly intelligent people. All of this makes me believe they decided what path to take in advance, making the best decision for them for their own reasons.

They are wealthy people and can afford the best of care. When the media says things like, “She wants to take care of her children,” I do hope people realize that Mrs. Edwards is not worried about what she will do if she finds herself too weak to cook dinner, or to do the laundry and ironing. Most people with millions don’t do that (many dual-career couples with high incomes don’t do that, either.) They have nannies to care for the children, maids to cook and clean, gardeners to take care of the begonias. (Likewise, the media made so much of Nancy Reagan “taking care of the former President” during his decline from Alzheimer’s, like she was really the one giving him sponge baths and changing his bed linen. I found this implied impression insulting to the exhausted caretakers of millions of other Americans.)

John Edwards may be trailing behind Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama among the Democrats (even if he’s getting all the headlines at the moment), but it is still early in the race. What no one in the Edwards camp is saying, but what they had to have thought of, is that he represents an alternative for the millions of Americans who are aghast at the thought of a woman or a black man in charge of the country. He is also likely to learn much sympathy for the way he rushed home from the campaign trail to be at his wife’s side (a situation that is likely to arise again). And he puts every single one of his opponents in the unenviable position of not being able to criticize him - for anything - without looking like insensitive oafs.

But whatever happens, I do wish Elizabeth Edwards the best.