It's Elizabeth's Story To Tell

It was so easy to like Elizabeth Edwards when she played by the rules.

In 2004, millions adored her as the smart and witty belle who sidelined her law career after the devastating death of her teenage son and who then rallied to give birth in middle age to two children and her husband's political career. On the campaign trail, she was candid in ways that closed the distance with female voters. She refused to fall victim to the stereotype of the sleek and benign candidate's wife.

Good for her, we said.

Then Edwards became America's favorite cancer survivor when she wrote a best-selling book that described, with grace and grit, how she did it.

Once again, she refused to be a victim.

Good for her, we said again.

Now Elizabeth Edwards has written a book about how she inched her way out of a series of paralyzing heartbreaks, including her husband's infidelity after 30 years of marriage. She makes it clear that his affair has wounded her but will not break her. Nor will it render her mute.

In her refusal to be the silently grieving but compliant spouse, she has broken Rule No. 1 for political wives: Thou Shalt Not Out the Cad. And Smile, Damn It.

Yet again, Edwards has refused to play victim.

For this, she must pay.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd derided "Saint Elizabeth" for writing a "gratuitous peek" into the "dregs" of their lives.

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, in an online piece for The Daily Beast titled "Elizabeth Edwards the Hypocrite," chided Edwards for refusing to name the other woman, Rielle Hunter, and then lobbed this grenade:

"We're culturally programmed to despise the harlot who brings the good man down. Old habits die hard. … But wise women know that the world's Elizabeths owe the world's Hunters a thank-you note."

Huh?

Rebecca Traister, writing for Salon.com, described Edwards' book tour as "one of the most sadomasochistic publicity jaunts in political history" and accused her of "exposing herself and her family not only to further gossip and humiliation, but to political censure."

Ah, "political censure." Translation: Lady, you are really screwing up your husband's career.

Those who read the book for themselves may see a different motive: Perhaps Elizabeth Edwards is simply trying, for the first time, to be Elizabeth Edwards.

"For so long I moved to a cadence set by someone else," she writes in "Resilience." First, she was a military kid, moving wherever her father's career took her.

Then she married John, and his career "was on a rocket" that set the course for the next three decades of life as Elizabeth Edwards, spouse.

"If I spoke publicly, I was asked about John. If I was asked to be on a board, it was because they had come to know me through John. I needed to be independent of him, maybe because he had been independent of me."

Edwards has invited criticism by writing this book, and some of it is earned. While she admits to being devastated by her husband's infidelity, she absolves him of responsibility for his choices, depicting him instead as vulnerable to a predator's wiles. She also fails to acknowledge that she let so many down when she continued to campaign on her husband's character after finding out about his affair.

What is troubling about many of the attacks, though, is their focus on her willingness to speak publicly about her pain. What writers like Dowd, Parker and Traister fail to acknowledge, and perhaps never have had to consider, is the easy privilege of their own outspoken lives.

Maybe that's why I cut Edwards a wider swath. I met her once, in 2007, only days after she announced that her cancer had metastasized and was terminal. I don't know her, but I do know something about her world.

I'm married to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, so I know how it feels when someone tries to refract everything you do or say through the lens of your marriage. I wrote a book about Sherrod's 2006 Senate race, with his blessing. But some argued that this wife, this writer, had no business telling her tale. The campaign had been a rewarding but difficult year for both of us, but those who cared only about the candidate thought a candid account of my experience was inappropriate, if not irrelevant.

To me, the only irrelevance was their definition of wifely duty.

The similarities between Edwards and me end there, but not my empathy. She has something to say and an audience that wants to listen. That should be enough, but there's more to her story, and it is her story to tell.

What we seldom hear in the uproar over the book is her persistent theme: For her, time is running out. She does not know, she writes, what to do with talk of anything happening more than a year away.

"Does it matter where the Olympics are held in eight years? Maybe not for me. So when there is such talk, my mind immediately wanders: How long will I have been dead by then?"

Quickly, she says, she pushes such thoughts away.

Until the next time.

And the next.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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