So in January 2009, what's the first thing John Edwards does to make life different for poor people in America?
Well, a lot of it is a legislative agenda that needs to pass, but some of it he can do right away. We need to make certain we lift up people who are working but are still in poverty, by enforcing existing labor laws that are not enforced. He wants to triple the earned-income tax credit (not a sexy issue but very important) and raise the minimum wage -- if you raise it by a dollar, 900,000 people are raised out of poverty. You enforce anti-discrimination laws, and you raise many women out of poverty. You deal with healthcare issues and school issues. His healthcare agenda is one of the first things he wants to get passed.
When you look back at the Clinton experiment in healthcare reform back in 1993 and '94, what do you learn from what they did, or failed to do?
I remember watching an incredibly impressive appearance by Hillary before some kind of congressional committee on C-SPAN. She answered the questions really impressively. Some of them were very hostile, but I remember one thing: She kept referring to [the administration's] program, and she would gesture to this huge stack of documents that represented their "plan." It's such a long time ago, I hope I'm remembering this correctly, but it made such a visual impression on me. And one of the things they did wrong was [presenting] the visual of this big plan, that government was going to do all of that, instead of explaining it, without that visual, just to say: "If you have a Blue Cross/Blue Shield card in your pocket, and you're happy with that, nothing's changing for you, except the cost is likely to go down. There's nothing for you to be afraid of." I don't think they did a good job explaining that.
Part of it is that when we talk in complex ways we exhibit enormous command of the information; we're speaking to elite media, but we're not speaking to the people who are going to be affected by the policies and reassuring them. It is hard to simplify some of these things -- they're really complex. But this is actually what John does extraordinarily well. [As a trial attorney he learned] to describe complex medicine to people who aren't trained, and to say the doctor is wrong, in a way that respects them and doesn't talk down, and moves them. And he can never be dishonest because there's another lawyer sitting right there, ready to take away what he needs, which is their trust, if he's dishonest. So I'm convinced he has the capacity to explain these complicated things in a way that people understand -- and not to be subject to that guy who's paid to call him a liar.
Do you ever have twinges about, well, you're supporting this great guy, your husband, but against the first credible woman candidate and the first credible African-American candidate in the race?
No, I don't. I wind up talking about this a lot. My job as the mother of daughters is to make sure my children see that every opportunity is available to them. What we hope to achieve is a society that doesn't value a white man because he's a white man, but also doesn't value a woman because she's a woman, or a black because he's a black. So it bothers me that the pitch is made, as it is, that there's an obligation of people to give support. When I was a lawyer, I was the first female lawyer many people had ever seen. I had an obligation to my client to do the work right, but I thought constantly about my obligation to the women who came after me. If I didn't do a good job, they wouldn't get a chance to sit where I'm sitting. I think one of the things that make me so completely comfortable with this is that keeping that door open to women is actually more a policy of John's than Hillary's.
How do you see that?
On the issues that are important to women, she has not ... well, healthcare, that's enormously important to women, all the polls say, and what she says now is, we're going to have a national conversation about healthcare. And then she describes some cost-saving things, which John also supports, but she acts like that's going to make healthcare affordable to everyone. And she knows it won't. She's not really talking about poverty, when the face of poverty is a woman's face, often a single mother. She gave that speech on abortion a few years ago [saying abortion should be "safe, legal and rare"].
Look, I'm sympathetic, because when I worked as a lawyer, I was the only woman in these rooms, too, and you want to reassure them you're as good as a man. And sometimes you feel you have to behave as a man and not talk about women's issues. I'm sympathetic -- she wants to be commander in chief. But she's just not as vocal a women's advocate as I want to see. John is. And then she says, or maybe her supporters say, "Support me because I'm a woman," and I want to say to her, "Well, then support me because I'm a woman." The question is not so much how she campaigns -- that's theater. The question is, what does her campaign tell you about how she'll govern? And I'm not convinced she'd be as good an advocate for women. She needs a rationale greater for her campaign than I've heard. When she announced her candidacy she said, "I'm in it to win it." What is that? That's not a rationale. Same with Senator Obama -- I've yet to hear a rationale. John is extremely clear about what he can accomplish and why he's the one to do it.
[Editor's note: Matt Drudge has linked to the above answer with a banner headline saying "Gender Bender: Wife Edwards Says Hillary 'Behaving Like a Man.'" Joan Walsh responds here.]
I was actually more sympathetic to her abortion speech than you, I think. I was raised Catholic, and I have relatives who are on some level pro-choice, as in, well, it's very difficult, but who can really make that choice but a woman? But they're extremely squeamish about abortion, and they want to make it very rare. Don't we need to include them in this dialogue?
I don't think we should muddle the language. Yes, we have to be able to talk to someone who's squeamish about it, but the question really is, who should make the decision? And it has to be the woman. Hillary may be expressing exactly what she believes -- I hope she is -- but the wiggle room in what she says makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't think she has found the best way yet to explain her position to move the people who are squeamish.
Speaking of Senator Clinton, your husband is getting rapped for maybe collaborating with her to close some of the debates to the full group of Democratic candidates ...
Well, John answered that, and I posted on MyDD [July 13].
You blogged on it on MyDD? That's funny. You're famous for that, actually -- people always said you were a Daily Kos diarist under another name.
I wasn't. But I have blogged using other screen names before. Before the Whole Foods guy got in trouble [the Wall Street Journal revealed last week that CEO John Mackey used pseudonyms to deride competitors online] I decided that that wasn't such a good idea. But what I said was, what John said was, there is a need to get the debates more serious. You have these formats with 60-second answers, and in 60 seconds, John's position on healthcare sounds just like Hillary's answer, when it couldn't be farther apart. So we need to find a way to have serious debates, that's all John is saying. Maybe it's two candidates at a time. Maybe it's three hours, but nobody would go for that. But in the WMUR debate [cosponsored with CNN in June] we argued to include Mike Gravel. He is clearly a Democrat, he's not Lyndon LaRouche. I know Dennis [Kucinich] is now making noise, but Dennis knows John is not interested in not having him participate. But we have got to find a way to make these debates better.
I can't wrap this up without asking about your health. Were you prepared for the criticism you got for continuing to campaign?
I had no idea I'd get that kind of criticism. But you know, people who've been in this situation haven't criticized me. And the people who haven't -- I just hope they never go through it. And it got worse after [the] Coulter [incident]. Well, we were talking about home-schooling the kids anyway, before I got sick. John's gone all the time, I'm gone a lot, and it was going to be the only way for us to be together as a family.
But you know, after all I've been through, I realize: You don't know exactly what life lessons you taught your kids until much later. You don't. And maybe the most important life lesson for them is for me to say, When bad things happen, you don't let them take you down. If I hadn't continued to campaign, I'd be sending the opposite message: When bad things happen, go hide. Do I know with absolute certainty we're doing the right thing? I don't. Having been through what I've been through, I hope people trust I wouldn't risk my relationship with my children. I think this is the right choice.
About the writer
Joan Walsh is Salon's editor in chief.
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