What Elizabeth Edwards Did for the Antiwar Movement

Published on Wednesday, December 8, 2010
by John Nichols
The Nation

Elizabeth Edwards was a distinct political figure—the wife of a vice-presidential nominee and leading presidential contender who was consistently willing to stake out more dynamic and detailed positions than her husband. She was, for instance, dramatically more supportive of gay rights than John Edwards—so much so that when the former senator was asked about the issue during 2008 presidential debates he ended up having to explain why he had not yet "evolved" toward Elizabeth's more enlightened stances in favor of same-sex marriage and rescinding "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

I always enjoyed interviewing Elizabeth more than John because Elizabeth, who has died at age 61 after a long battle with cancer, was so much more likely to say something that mattered. And where Elizabeth Edwards said the most that mattered during the time of her greatest political prominence was in her embrace of the anti-war movement at a point when her husband and other leading Democrats remained troublingly tentative.

Always more deeply and specifically critical of the Iraq War, Elizabeth Edwards played an essential role in moving her husband toward a more aggressively anti-war position as he prepared for his 2008 presidential run. But it was not just John Edwards that Elizabeth moved. With a specific act in the aftermath of the 2004 presidential contest, the wife of the Democratic party's vice presidential candidate in that race gave a sort of official blessing to a more militant—and meaningful—anti-war activism.

In the summer of 2005—long before John Edwards apologized for his 2002 vote to authorize President Bush to take the country to war in Iraq—Elizabeth Edwards expressed support for Cindy Sheehan, as the mother of slain soldier Casey Sheehan was emerging as the face of a noisier, more unapologetic and more uncompromising antiwar movement.

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