Elizabeth Edwards: Mincing No Words

Elizabeth Edwards continues to hit the presidential campaign trail for her husband, John Edwards, even though she's suffered a recurrence of cancer.

That alone has raised many eyebrows, but perhaps it's her outspokenness that's grabbed the most attention.

The paperback edition of Elizabeth Edwards' best-selling book, "Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers," has a new chapter about her renewed battle with cancer, and what it's meant to her family.

She spoke with co-anchor Hannah Storm about it on The Early Show Wednesday. She also talked about the election, her willingness to speak out, her criticism of her husband's chief rivals for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and her intense verbal sparring match with right-wing political pundit Ann Coulter.

In the 30 years they've been married, noted The Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith, Elizabeth and John have faced many challenges, and much heartbreak.

Their son, Wade, died in a car crash at 16-years-old, devastating the family, and leaving his sister, Cate, an only child. At 48, with the help of modern medicine, Elizabeth had Emma Claire and, two years later, Jack. They often played sidekicks in the 2004 campaign, when Edwards was John Kerry's running mate after a failed bid for the ticket's top spot.

In the last days of that campaign, Elizabeth learned she had breast cancer. The day after the election, she told the world.

By December 2006, when John announced he was making a second run for the White House, it looked as though Elizabeth was cancer-free.

But, three months later, a broken rib revealed some horrible news: Elizabeth's cancer had returned, and was incurable.

She vowed to stay active in the campaign, and has been doing so ever since, talking issues with crowds, and surprising many with her outspokenness, like when she called in to a cable TV show to confront Coulter.

Asked if that was "a little bit of Elizabeth being unplugged," John responded, "If this is Elizabeth unplugged, she's been unplugged for the 30-plus years that I've known her!"

It's that openness, Smith observes, that's helped make her book "Saving Graces" a chart-topper, and her a model of courage to many people in America.

Edwards said, "I have a lot of energy. I feel great. The trail is actually energizing."

She admitted her decision to keep pounding the pavement for her husband is complicated, but so is running for president complicated. "You have to decide what you're going to do. We've pretty much decided to take the kids with us on the road in the fall, and home-school them. … I didn't want to lose that time with them, whatever time I've got left, I didn't want to lose that. So, they will be on the road with us.

"And honestly, thinking about other people's healthcare problems, and healthcare policy instead of my own, is actually good for me. I don't sit around feeling sorry for myself. It gives me purpose. I'm not sort of waiting, feeling, 'Do I hurt here? Have I got this symptom?' Those things are just never, ever on my mind. Instead, the stories of other people's problems are."

Storm remarked about the "distinct lack of self-pity in your book," and Edwards observed: "Honestly, I see that as I go out, too. Honestly, people come up about health problems, very infrequently their own, usually somebody they care about. People are, I think, pretty good about putting aside their own problems, if they see somebody else who's got a bigger problem. It's a little hard to bellyache. And I see that all the time."

As for the role, in general, of wives in the campaign, Storm noted that, "There are people who, because it's a woman that is running, it might come be up to the wives to come down hard on Hillary Clinton, because their husbands can't. (Some observers feel a man can't criticize a woman in that way."

But Edwards disagreed, saying, "If you're talking about policies and things like that, that there's no problem in anyone criticizing or making the distinctions between their policies and Sen. Clinton's policies. In fact, I think it's an imperative that you do that. … I think the distinctions should be made by anybody — the candidates and surrogates for the candidates, which would include the spouse. "

Storm observed that Edwards seems more outspoken now than ever, but Edwards said, "I think it's because I'm front and center, not because I've changed, but because the coverage of me has changed. I think it's really important to be honest. I don't go out of my way to complain about anybody else, but if I'm asked a direct question, I try the best I can to answer it, particularly if it's about policies, and I think the other things that I was saying had to do with policies, with Sen. Obama's votes for funding of the Iraq war. (He's) very proud of his speech that he gave before the Iraq war vote, but he has voted for funding. And I think just need to be upfront about that. And Sen. Clinton, who was great on health care in the '90s, but doesn't have a health care policy now."

Asked about her comment that, "We can't make John (Edwards) black and we can't make him a woman," Elizabeth Edwards responded: "I do hate to use that. It's taken out of context. I was talking about the Internet and trying to break through on mainstream media, and how, when the mainstream media are enamored, and frankly, if I were a journalist, I might be, too, with this extremely interesting fight between an African-American and a woman. It's a little hard to get into the mix of that, even if you have great policies and a lot of support around the country, (it's) still hard to get into that mix. So we have turned — because we can't do anything about that dynamic, we've turned to try to communicate directly with people through the Internet and — no offense — not allowed the mainstream media to be a sieve that blocks John's message."