WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2010


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From Page One A13 Despite husband’s affair, Edwards was a loyal advocate edwards from A1


later wrote a best-sellingmemoir, “Saving Graces” (2006), in which she describedher life and fight for survival.Newscoveragepromoted her as one of the “100most influ- entialpeople intheworld” (Time), “the most refreshing political spouse since Eleanor Roosevelt” (Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine) and “shoo-in for regular person” (TheWashingtonPost).


Political protector Behind that persona, Ms. Ed-


wards was a ferocious advocate whocreatedbriefingbooks forher husband, directed campaign staff and went after his political ene- mies, displaying a temper notable eveninthehigh-pressureenviron- ment of politics. Their difference in appearance — the candidate was derided by opponents as “the Breck Girl” for his good looks, while she clearly struggled with herweight—attractedsupporters as well, and John Edwards’s com- mitment to her in her illness seemed to indicate that theirswas a marriage that mirrored many couples’ups and downs. By the next presidential cam-


paign cycle, when her husband was running for president, Ms. Edwards’s cancer had returned, spreading to her bones. Doctors told her that it was treatable but incurable, and the couple’s deci- sionto continue seeking theDem- ocratic presidential nomination stunned political observers. In August 2008, when her hus-


band publicly admitted to having repeatedly lied about carrying on an affair with campaign aide Ri- elleHunter, the campaigncame to an abrupt end. In January, after her husband said he had fathered a child with Hunter, the Ed- wardses separated. Ms.Edwardshadlearnedof the


affair in early 2006 but stayed silent about it in public and cam- paigned for her husband. That annoyed some of her supporters, whonotedthat theEdwardses ran as a couple, telling the story of their romance and publicly re- newing their vows on their 30th anniversary. Duringthat campaign, shepub-


licly took on acerbic conservative commentator Ann Coulter, spoke out about her disagreement with herhusbandonhis support for the Iraq war resolution and her sup- port for same-sex marriage, and addressedhowshe copedwiththe deathof their 16-year-old son. When the National Enquirer


exposed the affair just before the 2008 Democratic National Con- vention,Ms.Edwards stepped out of the limelight but made it clear that she was staying in the mar- riage. “This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be pri-


CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES


Elizabeth Edwards, who died of breast cancer that had spread, pushed for better national health care and testified before Congress.


6


on washingtonpost.com Confronting struggles with grace


For a photo gallery of the life of Elizabeth Edwards, a video interview with her on the political trail with her husband in 2008 and a look back by the Reliable Source, visit postpolitics.com.


vate because as painful as it was I did notwant to have to play it out on a public stage as well,” she wrote ontheDailyKos. She did not abandon the public


stage, however.Amonth later, she began speaking at events across the country and testifying before Congressabout theneedforbetter national health care. She also joined the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, as a senior fellow.


Heartbreaking loss BornMaryElizabethAnaniaon


July 3, 1949, in Jacksonville, Fla., Ms.Edwardswas thedaughterofa Navy pilot and grew up in Japan, where her father was stationed twice. She received a bachelor’s de-


gree fromthe University of North Carolina atChapelHill,where she also went to law school. Shemar- ried John Edwards, a fellow stu- dent, shortly after their gradua- tionin1977. She clerked for U.S. District


Judge J. Calvitt Clarke Jr. in Nor- folk, then worked in the North Carolina attorney general’s office and later at the firmofMerriman, Nicholls and Crampton in Ra- leigh, remaining thereuntil 1996. Amother of two, she had a full


and lucrative life as a lawyer and homemaker. But when son Wade waskilledafterhis car,buffetedby a strongwind, slid and rolled, she quit her job and stayed home to care for then-14-year-olddaughter Cate.Sheandherhusbandsetupa foundationinWade’shonor. For many months, she visited


Wade’s grave site every day. She took his SATscorewhen it arrived after his death. She read him books fromhis classmates’ school reading list, she said in hermem-


U.S. gives up on renewal of Israeli settlement freeze


BY KAREN DEYOUNG TheObama administration has


abandoned its effort to persuade Israel to renew a settlement con- struction freeze,whichU.S. diplo- mats had hoped would invigorate moribund peace talks with the Palestinians. With senior Israeli and Pales-


tinian negotiators scheduled to hold talks in Washington next week, and Secretary of State Hil- laryRodhamClinton due to deliv- er a major Middle East speech Friday, it was unclear what direc- tion the administration’s policy willnowtake. U.S. officials who briefed re-


porters here and in Jerusalem on the condition of anonymity said Tuesday that the administration had taken off the table a package ofpolitical andsecurity incentives offered to Israel in exchange for a 90-day freeze onWestBank settle- ment construction. The expectation had been that


thethree-monthfreezewouldpro- vide breathing space for Israeli- Palestinian negotiators to gain momentum in talks on issues in- cluding the borders of a Palestin- ianstate. The United States ultimately


decided not to comply with an Israeli request to put its offer in writing, including $3 billion worth of jet fighters, a commit- ment to object to anti-Israel reso- lutions in international organiza- tions, and an agreement never again to ask for a suspension of settlement construction. Although the freeze is one of


their key demands, Palestinian of- ficials had refused to resume talks on the basis of the partial freeze under discussion, one that didnot includeahalt toIsraelibuildingin East Jerusalem. An Israeli official said that


while negotiations over the pack- age had embroiled Israel and the


United States, the proposal hadn’t reallymoved the Palestinians and thuswas fruitless. U.S. officials sought to play


down the importance of with- drawing the moratorium offer, saying that talks nextweekwould move directly to “core issues,” in- cluding land boundaries. “That is going to be the next step,” said a U.S.officialwhowasauthorizedto brief reporters onthe conditionof anonymity. “We are going to im- mediately engage with both sides onsubstantivenegotiations.” Isaac Molcho, Israeli Prime


Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s special envoy to the talks, arrived in Washington on Tuesday, and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Er- ekatwill be here later in theweek. IsraeliDefenseMinister Ehud Ba- rak and Palestinian Prime Minis- ter SalamFayyad are scheduled to attend a conference this weekend at the Brookings Institution, whereClintonwill speakFriday. WhenIsrael initiallyagreedtoa


10-month freeze on new West Bank settlement constructionlate last year, U.S. officials expressed certainty that it would be extend- ed once negotiations got under- way. But direct talks did not start until September, just at the point themoratoriumwas set to expire. Before the incentive offer was


taken off the table, Barak told an Israeli parliamentary committee that Israel had “not reached an understanding with the United States on how to resume the con- struction freeze.” He said that the administration still needed con- gressional approval but had been distracted by theWikiLeaks scan- dal and the crisis between North Korea andSouthKorea. AskedaboutBarak’scomments,


State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Israel’s government had been “fully occupied” in re- cent days with a major forest fire there.


deyoungk@washpost.com


oir. Itwas after his death that she, who had always used her own family name professionally, be- cameElizabethEdwards. “I tookmy son’s name,” she told


Ms. magazine in 2004. “I didn’t takemyhusband’sname.” Within a couple of years, she


underwent fertility treatments so thatatage48and50shecouldgive birth to her two youngest chil- dren,EmmaClaire and Jack.


She also began visiting Web


sites where other bereaved par- ents sharedtheirpainandinsight. In doing so, she came to under- stand the power of the Web to create communities and its use as anorganizing tool.


His chief adviser In her memoir, Ms. Edwards


wrote that she decided she would not be a caricature of a campaign spouse. “There were a lot of ways to have this experience, but I only knew one, the one I had learned growingup—openup, let themin, and find out what we share,” she wrote. “You didn’t have to be per- fect; youhad to be open.” Throughout the campaign, she


was her husband’s chief policy ad- viser, usually agreeing with him but occasionally pushing him to the left, urging amore fundamen- tal change, such as creating an individual-based system to achieve universal health-care cov- erage, rather than the employer- based system. Afterhercancerwasdiagnosed,


she went through an aggressive series of treatments, and the can- cerdisappeared. InMarch2007, in themidst of her husband’s second presidential campaign, the couple announced that the cancer was back and that doctors had de- clared it treatable but incurable. Ms. Edwards refused to let her husbandwithdrawfromthe race. “You know, you really have two choices here. . . . Either you push


forward with the things you were doingyesterday,or youstartdying [and] let cancer win before it needed to,” she told CBS News anchorKatieCouric. “I don’twant to do that. Iwant to live.” Thecampaigndecisionbrought


awave ofmedia attention. “I’m not worried about me or


what’s going to happentome.The fact that [people are] thinking of me and not health-care policy, or thinking of me and not global warming, that’s bad,” she told The Post in2007. She remained a staunch advo-


cate, defender and campaign pro- vocateur. That summer, Coulter verbally attacked her husband and said shewished “he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.” Ms. Edwards, spotting Coulter on the MSNBC talk show “Hardball,” calledinandontheair insisted politely but firmly that she refrain frompersonal attacks. Coulter refused to apologize and attacked the Edwards campaign for raising money by using her words. But the confrontation ap- peared to be a tipping point, cost- ingCoulteradvertisersandclients forher opinioncolumn. A few weeks later, during an


interviewwithSalon.com,Ms.Ed- wards criticized her husband’s ri- vals, the two leading Democratic candidates, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Ba- rackObamaof Illinois, saying that her husband would be a better advocate forwomenthanClinton.


But the Edwards campaign ended in January 2008 after coming in third to Obama and Clinton in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and SouthCarolina.


No ‘Saint Elizabeth’ The publication of an anony-


mously sourced book, “Game Change,” this year shocked many, because it punctured “the lie of Saint Elizabeth,” as writers John Heilemann and Mark Halperin wrote, repeating allegations that sheberatedcampaignstaffers and raged profanely at volunteers. “With her husband, she could


beintenselyaffectionateorbrutal- ly dismissive,” they wrote. “At times subtly, at times blatantly, shewas forever letting John know that she regardedhimasher intel- lectual inferior. She called her spouse a ‘hick’ in front of other people and derided his parents as rednecks.” Jennifer Palmieri, a former Ed-


wards campaign official, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed defense of her friend: “Elizabethwould be the first to tell you that she is opinionated, unyielding, blunt andunwillingtosuffer fools.Saint Elizabeth she is not. And no one laughs louder than she at that notion. But she is also one of the wisest,warmest and funniest girl- friends a woman could hope to have, truly a call-her-in-the-mid- dle-of-the-night-and-she-will- drop-everything-to-help sort.” sullivanp@washpost.com


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