So, let me see if I have this right, weasel: The kind of work Edwards did is nothing to proud of, or more accurately wasn't an an example of him being tough in the face of tragedy because there were paralegals in his firm? Or because he was doing his job? That argument doesn't make much sense even without considering that he was not obliged to represent those specific clients or that most professionals, from quarterbacks to film directors, can fairly claim credit for work that their support staff contributed to.

You would have done better to say "I don't like lawyers, but I like Chris Rock."

I never said any of the Spanish-speaking cultures were superior. I said it interests me. I'm not in the business of making judgments about the myriad of cultures in the world.

Great literature such as Borges, Cortazar, Neruda, Mistral, Cervantes, Garcia Marquez, Marti, Rodo, Rojas, Lope de Vega, Galdos, Clarin, Paz, Unamuno, Dario, Machado, Valle-Inclan, Arlt, Carpentier, Benedetti, Ferre...

It depends on the native speaker. Is the native speaker also fluent in English? Is there a substantial difference in the level of their English and my Spanish? Are they American citizens (the jobs I'm looking at require citizenship)? There's always going to be someone more qualified than me. And I'm always going to be more qualified than someone else. I don't claim to be the most amazing candidate for a job that requires Spanish, but having studied the language for 8 years and having lived in Spain, I am confident that my language abilities are as close to those of a native speaker as possible.

Anyway, when did this turn into a debate about my qualifications? I'm not running for office here.

Elizabeth Edwards: "These were emotionally and physically exhausting trials where the fate of a family was in his hands"

And in whose hands are you telling me John Edwards placed the fates of those in our military, and their families, when he voted in favor of war: God's? Does John Edwards have the ability to do such a thing?

Everyone wants to be good, Mrs. Edwards. That alone doesn't make your husband special. And no amount of years spent trying to obtain justice for others earns for John Edwards the right to create even so much as one minute of time in which a member of our military is to die alone and knowing that he is without someone, anyone, who loves him. Imagine how that GI's mother feels and what she must think. Yes, I am suggesting that to you, Mr. Edwards. I dare do such a thing as to suggest that you--even you--would do well to begin to practice what you preach.

You would have that soldier's mother absolve you (that is, your husband and the person on whose behalf you speak). Nothing about that strikes you as being strange?

I'd add that, if anything, John Edwards' own suffering, if it was as you say it was, should've prevented him from being able to vote for anything like war.

It's not that I don't appreciate John Edwards' working on legal cases. It's that he isn't special because of it: we'd all do the same thing. In fact, isn't Edwards' campaign meant to have us know that he would make all of us more able to do that or something like it? Do you mean all of us except for those of us for whom your husband makes decisions saying that we are ones who will not have life, or do you mean all of us?

"Special" to me would be John Edwards' ridding himself of all his money so that he and his family (if his family had integrity and they stayed together) could come to know what it is that he and they are able now, and as things stand, only to profess to know. Yes, such a decision could mean that Elizabeth Edwards, if she needed care, might have to go to what not long ago was called the county home. Yes, John Edwards wouldn't look too good, then, being off and campaigning for the presidency and having put his wife into a home. But the people whose votes Edwards seeks to obtain for himself live and die that way, except for the campaigning; and campaigning, no matter who's doing it, is the last thing on their minds. If the idea of a campaign should fall upon one of them, and if it should be the idea of Edwards' campaign, what reason does the victim-recipient have to trust John Edwards, and especially when it's only Edwards' money that makes him different from her? (Well, his money and the fact of such things as the capriciousness with which Edwards votes for wars which are known to take from certain of his constituents such things as their children.)

You and your husband can't help us, Mrs. Edwards. You aren't qualified. And it's your choice to be that way.

"staring the worst in the face" no doubt includes the personal challenges they have faced in their family, but the really hard things to face are often the things that are encouuntered in the lives of others. Most of us simply walk on by, feeling little empathy, and doing little or nothing to help. Yes, John Edwards has been rewarded handosmley for his efforts in representing those who have been injured, or treated unfairly. As a physician, i could easily harbor resentment towards him, and his success in suing healthcare providers, among others. I choose instead to see beyond that. He's been willing to get face to face with the bleak situations, the misery of others, and become a champion for them. He's good at it. In America, we reward excellent performance with money. It's how we roll. He and Elizabeth have chosen to take what they have been blessed with to try to change the world for others.

I respect that.

If this was your first post ever on the fray; imagine looking at this thread and trying to understand it. FreditorG does not show a Slate flag in this threadview on the firefox browser (your flag shows)... so why would anyone expect her to know that he is any different from all these other responses? She probably did not read this entire thread.

But hey, she sure read your article. Talk about your reader response! Way to go, John.

I guess it turned into a debate about YOU when you bragged about your interest in the language and culture of Spanish speaking countries.

The original topic was John Edwards' ability to empathize with those less fortunate.

I didn't brag about it, I stated an interest in a reply.

oops, are you trying to say she is John's daughter? The wife gets to use Mrs. for a title. It is kind of customary in America; you might want to spell check your subject line before your next official reply to a dignitary.

ouch

Edwards is where he is because part of the press (I'm looking at you, Will Saletan) likes him, and wants him to be successful They were begging for the '04 nomination to come down to Kerry vs. Edwards, and now he's considered a top-tier candidate in spite of having less experience than many of his less-celebrated competitors (Biden, Dodd, Richardson).

First you write: "Why does it matter what I think? Because the ad is ambiguous and political ads ask us to connect to the candidate through images and inference."

But then you tell on yourself: "I figured it was so clear what was being asked of the audience that a debate would start about whether it was right or wrong to bring up these issues, even obliquely." (emphasis added)

You were right the second time: the ad is clear.

Last week, in response to a reporter's question about his sinking campaign, John McCain said something like, "I've been through tougher things than this." Is that ambiguous?

Perhaps to make people like you happy he should have responded, "My A-4 Skyhawk was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile over North Vietnam. I was able to eject, but both of my arms and one of my legs was broken in the fall. I was captured by the North Vietnamese and imprisoned at the Hanoi Hilton for five and a half years, where I was placed in a cell and interrogated daily. When I refused to cooperate, I was beaten so severely that I lost consciousness on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the torture got worse and worse, so much so that I am unable to lift my arms over my head to this day. So, I am not concerned about my campaign's recent setbacks because I have endured much worse."

Elizabeth Edwards says, "It's unbelievably important that in our president we have someone who can stare the worst in the face and not blink." Yes, the audience is invited to infer meaning, but there is nothing ambiguous about it. Unlike you, the rest of America understands what McCain means by "tougher things than this" and what Elizabeth Edwards means by "the worst."

But let's be honest for a change: the only one being coy here is you. You confidently state in your headline, "A new ad exploits the suffering of the Edwards family." But then your first sentence is, "I think John Edwards just made an ad about his wife's cancer, but I'm not sure."

With the remaining 700 words, you mince around the edges, but you never come right and say what you mean: You think that John and Elizabeth Edwards are hypocrites because they are exploiting personal tragedy for political gain in direct contradiction with their beliefs as stated on 60 Minutes.

Bottom line: this was a cheesy, disingenuous hit piece. You should be ashamed of yourself.

She did not brag about her interest in the Spanish culture (at least, I did not see it as bragging). She used it as an explanation on why she got a degree in Spanish.

I challenge that conculsion -- anyone who has been through those challenges has been through those challenges. Period. It doensn't take "perspective and toughness" to have tragedies happen to you; it takes misfortune. Some people emerge from these better people; some emerge bitter and enraged.

More to the point, if it is in bounds for Edwards to direct our attention to his family tragedies, would it be OK for his oppnenents to question how he handled them? Clearly not. So by saying it is appropriate for candidates to bring up private tragedies, you are opening the door to a one-upmanship game of whose tragedies are worse than the others.

And that's not how I want to choose my president.

I notice that Slate headlines often take stronger stands than the articles they top.

(Thanks, gringo.)

Back to the topic at hand...what does everyone think of the commercial? lol

It's not an easy question to answer. The Edwardses are in an unusually awkward position - they have a personal history that elicits tremendous sympathy, but is structured in such a way that "cashing in on it" comes across a ghoulish.

I'd speculate that their current approach - focusing on the aspects of the past that are under their control, while leaving their consultants and advisers latitude to imply more - is probably the only reasonable response. What could they do? Fire the cynics and go the way of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich? To even acknolwedge the question would be an act of disrespect to people who are working very hard on their behalf. To answer it contains nothing but peril.

And, frankly, it's a question that can be turned back on me for asking it. I was completely sincere - but there's no reason to believe it. The response from Ms. Edwards has increased the profile of this magazine and this forum. That's a tangibly good thing for Slate and an indirectly good thing for me, personally, as the forum moderator.

I wouldn't do this job if I didn't believe my work served a larger and noble purpose (it isn't always easy to balance this job with law school, which offers far more lucrative long-term prospects) - but people are right to judge me in the context they find me, rather than against the entire field of "might-have-beens."

I'd say my question asks Elizabeth Edwards to justify herself within a similarly restricted ambit. They've chosen one of the most gruelling and difficult paths a private family can subject itself to. I'm certain they could be enjoying peacefully prosperous lives in relative obscurity right now. In making that choice, the window of judgment frames their interests far more narrowly than seems fair. Within the overall decision, certain choices are bound to seem dubious and borderline. They have to draw a line somewhere and can't win a debate focusing on where specifically they've chosen to do so.

That said, I'd like to see her wrestle with the question. I was a supporter of Dean in 2004 and presently support Obama in 2008. In both cases, I'd like to see the men elected, but what I most appreciate about them is a willingness to go off-script and think out loud in front of the public. I watched with dismay as I Dean's campaign staff seemed to single-handedly dismantle his campaign. The caricature of Dean known to the public today is nothing like the man who won my respect and support. As a donor to Obama, I'm watching his campaign do a similar thing - I've tried to unsubscribe myself (without success) to several of the mailing lists they've signed me up for - pointing out that his campaign literature makes me ashamed to support his campaign.

At the end of the day, I don't really care which particular person wins which particular election. I think this nation needs to see the character of its political debate elevated. The Rove/Bush Administration shows what happens when a politician submits his policy agenda to his image manager. The Iraq War debate, to me, showed a House and Senate equally compromised by attention to political image above substance. I'd like to see Elizabeth Edwards - and her husband - take greater risks in speaking spontaneously and candidly to the American public. But I can't pretend I represent a groundswell of public opinion. Look how many posters in this thread are quibbling about the cost of a haircut. Such candor would carry a very obvious cost which would probably do a short-term disservice to the long-term goals that the Edwards' have chosen to work towards.