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A True Political Partner
No one believes more in her husband's potential to be president than Elizabeth Edwards. But her confidence and belief in his character are so absolute, they raise questions about whether candidate and wife can see their campaign critically enough, or have strong, independent voices around them to challenge the candidate when necessary.
Four years ago Edwards participated in many of the nuts-and-bolts meetings and decisions of the campaign. This time she does far less of that, aides say. But she is never shy about offering advice based on her sense of what is best for her husband and her interaction with people on the campaign trail, and she can be demanding and sometimes intimidating to the staff, according to those who have worked in this and previous campaigns.
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"People say things to me all the time that grossly inflate my importance," Edwards said during another recent conversation. "There's no way to cut through it. If they believe it, it's so."
She plays a role in personnel decisions, but she plays it down. "I don't have any approval of anybody, except people who are in my world," she said. "Like who do you want to travel with you, and people who interact with us. I give feedback, you know. We have a chief of staff. If something goes right or something goes wrong, I let her know so she can do her job effectively."
In a recent phone interview, Edwards said she could not even recall the name of one of the campaign's newest hires and said she had not been involved in recent staff recruitments. Asked who is now running the campaign, she laughed again. "All these stories about my pulling the strings -- honestly, I don't know."
Policy Wonk and Provocateur
Edwards is a voracious consumer of information -- briefing books, the Internet, conversations with voters. More than one aide has received a late-night phone call asking for more information about something or an e-mail in the middle of the night -- Edwards admits she is an insomniac -- with an idea for the campaign.
She does not shrink from descriptions of her as someone who weighs in regularly on major policy decisions. She and her husband generally share the same views about issues, although they sometimes disagree. In 2002, she questioned whether her husband should support the resolution authorizing President Bush to go to war, believing there was no immediate provocation from Saddam Hussein. "And as you can see," she said, "I did not win the day."
When Edwards began discussing what kind of health-care plan to propose in this campaign, she preferred a more radical change, urging the campaign to consider an individual-based system rather than the existing employer-based system to achieve universal coverage. In the end, John Edwards adopted a plan that relies heavily on employer-based insurance while giving consumers the choice of buying into a Medicare-like option that could lead to something approaching a single-payer system. Aides say Elizabeth Edwards ended up supporting that blueprint.
She also disagrees with her husband on the issue of same-sex marriage. She supports it; he does not. He supports civil unions but has said that his small-town, Baptist upbringing has made him reluctant to endorse recognition of marriage.
Edwards said she participates in fewer policy discussions now than in the past, but others say she is deeply involved in any significant policy debate. Her public role, however, has become increasingly clear: She is the campaign's chief surrogate and provocateur.
Last month, she phoned in to MSNBC's "Hardball" to confront conservative firebrand Ann Coulter. A few weeks later, during an interview with Salon.com, she criticized the two leading Democratic candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), saying her husband would be a better advocate for women than Clinton and arguing that neither Clinton nor Obama had offered a compelling rationale for their candidacies.
Edwards said she is uncomfortable with all the attention those incidents received. "None of this was purposeful," she said. "Absolutely none. Zero."
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