NYT: Public Takes Up Pros and Cons of Edwards Bid

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/24/us/politics/24illness.html?ex=1175400000&en=7f48428fdb2ba070&ei=5043&partner=EXCITE

Public Takes Up Pros and Cons of Edwards Bid

By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: March 24, 2007

DENVER, March 23 — Important policy debates about the course of the nation in the next presidential election are still out there and will no doubt return. But for one day, many people all over the country seemed able to pause and reflect on something deeper, to questions of mortality and the bonds of marriage, ambition and devotion, hope and denial.

The announcement by former United States Senator John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, that they would continue his bid to be the Democratic Party nominee for president despite the spread of incurable breast cancer into her bones has opened a door, people all over the country said on Friday, to a discussion of character, his and hers.

For many people, the discussion is personal and visceral — the difference between wisdom and intelligence, and how best to spend a finite time with a loved one whose health and life are under siege by disease.


Mark Hirsch for The New York Times
David Redlawsk, an associate professor of political science at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, above, said he was among those who were affected by the emotion of the Edwardses’ decision. “For me it went to my core,” he said.

Is Mr. Edwards now the presidential race’s real embodiment of hope in all its audacity, or a symbol of blind ambition? A new profile in courage or a standard-bearer for callous disregard?

Many Democrats, including local party leaders in states like Iowa and Ohio where early primaries and caucuses could help set the stage for the nomination, said their opinion of Mr. Edwards went up, but probably even more said that about Mrs. Edwards.

Some voters among dozens questioned around the nation said they thought Mr. Edwards’s candidacy would be weakened, either by the distractions of disease or the fear that he could be a distracted president with an ill — and perhaps dying — wife in the White House. Others predicted a surge as people rallied around their fight.

But almost every opinion came with a big helping of something that hard-bitten politics often lacks: genuine emotion and pathos. Mr. Edwards’s candidacy, many people said, is now as much about heart as head.

FULL 2 page story at link.

[madrchsod]

1. we need more of this

"But almost every opinion came with a big helping of something that hard-bitten politics often lacks: genuine emotion and pathos. Mr. Edwards’s candidacy, many people said, is now as much about heart as head."

we do not need anymore of what we have now