Elizabeth Edwards.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW - Interview - Cover story

Elizabeth Edwards is one of those rare creatures in politics--a real human being. As she campaigns for her husband, John Edwards, she is winning audiences with her warm, straight-shooting style. She keeps a frenetic schedule, even after the bad news about her breast cancer returning. In May, she spoke to reporters in Madison, Wisconsin, before delivering a speech to a bipartisan group of women in politics. Looking sharp and relaxed in a black pantsuit, she paused to comment wryly to a photographer crouched in front of her, "That is the worst possible angle for a woman, you know. You may take those pictures, but you may not run them."

She dispatched questions about her decision to continue campaigning. "I don't think people who have actually been through these situations are surprised that we would want to live our lives to the fullest, and not give up the things that are important to us," she said. She tied her own diagnosis to the issue of health care generally, which remains people's number-one concern on the campaign trail, she said. "It would be hard to be selfish, eating bonbons with my feet on an ottoman, clicking the remote," rather than trying to do something about the "pain that is out there."

The campaign, she said, "is about the thousands of women who face the same diagnosis I face, but don't have the same access to care. Giving up on campaigning, on trying to make a difference, would be like giving up on them."

Aside from questions about her health, the topic she was pressed to address most was Hillary Clinton. Edwards talks a lot about breaking barriers as part of a generation of female attorneys who had to prove that women could do as well as the guys in previously all-male law firms. So now the delicate job of explaining why women should vote against her fellow barrier-breaking female attorney falls to her. As an advocate for women's issues and women's equal rights, how can she justify seeking votes for her husband, instead of the first likely female nominee for President? "In my opinion, the candidate who's best for women in this race is my husband," she said, citing his universal health care plan, his pledge to end poverty (a predominantly female problem, she reminded reporters), and his determination to fight for equal pay.

In her speech to the group Wisconsin Women in Government, Edwards made an interesting comment that could be interpreted as a sidelong swipe at Hillary. Speaking of Woodrow Wilson's First Lady, Edith Wilson, who is sometimes called the United States' first woman President because she filled in for her husband after he had a stroke, she noted, "She was against women voting." It turned out, Edwards said, "what she wanted was not for women to have power, but for Edith Wilson to have power."

In her book, Saving Graces , Edwards writes frankly about her grief after the death of her teenaged son, Wade; her decision, later in life, to have more children; her battle with breast cancer; and the communities of friends, well-wishers, and even an online support group of fellow sufferers who have sustained her. The book is heartbreaking in parts, and also unexpectedly funny--as when she talks about telling her young children, Jack and Emma Claire, about her cancer diagnosis:

"'Mommy has a bump,' I said. 'And that bump is called cancer. Cancer is very bad, but I will get rid of the bump, and the cancer by taking really strong medicine.'

"They looked bored. Somber, but bored. Or maybe just bored.

"'And that medicine is so strong that it will make my hair fall out.'

"I think it cheered them up. 'Your hair's gonna fall out? All of it? When? Can I see?'"

As the daughter of a Navy reconnaissance pilot, Elizabeth Edwards spent her early childhood in Japan. She writes about being raised by a zany, outgoing father and a mother who, like other military wives, kept the family together not knowing how long a particular mission might last, or even if her husband would return. Elizabeth met John Edwards at UNC law school in Chapel Hill. They were married the Saturday after they took the bar exam, and she...