March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Nothing stays personal in politics, not marriage, not divorce, not your kid's drug problem, and not cancer, as presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, demonstrated yesterday when they held a press conference in the garden in North Carolina where they were married more than 30 years earlier.

This time they were there to announce they had just learned that Elizabeth had Stage 4 cancer, treatable but incurable.

As much as the illness is personal, the announcement was, by necessity, political. In my informal poll afterward of people generally sympathetic to the Edwards candidacy, I got two reactions in addition to complete sympathy for the family, which includes two young children.

The first is the Oprah reaction and had Elizabeth at its center: What a plucky, self-sacrificing, and cheerful approach to a personal blow. She did what so many who sit opposite Oprah in the afternoon do -- she picked herself up and moved on. Next week and next year, she said, ``I'll be doing all the things I did last week.''

Elizabeth's part of the conference was in keeping with the person who came through in the heartbreaking story at the center of her book ``Saving Graces,'' published last fall, of her first bout with tragedy, the 1996 death of her 16-year-old son, Wade, in a car accident.

No Self-Pity

One of the warmest and most genuine political spouses ever to come to Washington, Edwards conveyed all the devastation of losing a son without turning maudlin or self-pitying. She also displayed an extraordinary perspective on life. Even a cancer diagnosis right before the end of the 2004 election campaign didn't knock her off stride.

``Wade was dead by the time an EMT came to the side of his car to help him... I had a chance, which he didn't have,'' she wrote.

Back then, John and Elizabeth Edwards decided to keep the discovery of her cancer private, fearful that any disclosure would affect the campaign. After losing the election, they announced the diagnosis quietly.

They decided differently this time, which brings me to the second reaction, expressed mostly by women: You get the worst news a cancer patient can get -- there's been a recurrence -- and one of your first acts is to call a press conference to discuss its political impact.

Smooth Lawyer

The women still love her, not so much him. No matter the situation, the former trial lawyer comes across as the smooth talker trying to woo Juror No. 8. They wanted something purely human, in keeping with their own experiences of life, something no doubt weaker and politically dangerous.

They wanted Edwards to act more like Edward VIII, who renounced the throne of England for Wallis Simpson, to say, over his wife's pleading objection, that he's giving this up ``for the woman I love.''

Maybe things would change later. Maybe he'd look silly later getting back in. But better that than to resume traipsing through Iowa and New Hampshire trolling for votes, to New York, Boston and California together next week begging for contributions.

Elizabeth explained that she couldn't ask her husband to take away his time and energy from the campaign ``because I want his company.''

But she shouldn't have to. There was a similar political moment back in 1971 when it looked certain that Senator Birch Bayh, an Indiana Democrat who was leading the field of possible presidential candidates, would throw his hat into the ring. He had formed an exploratory committee, opened a national headquarters and built an enviable war chest.

`Midwestern' JFK

After leading the successful fight to defeat the Supreme Court nomination of G. Harrold Carswell, CBS Television's Eric Sevareid called Bayh the ``Midwestern John F. Kennedy'' for the intelligence, charisma and the ability to move people he had shown.

In October 1971, Bayh's 38-year-old wife, Marvella, was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a radical mastectomy. The senator announced he would stop his exploratory run for president. ``Her complete recovery may require a lengthy period of recuperation. During this time, I want to be at her side --not in Miami, Milwaukee or Los Angeles.'' Bayh's political moment passed. Marvella died at the age of 46 in 1979.

John Edwards shows once again that most politicians are different from you and me. Stopping running is akin to death.

The Best Medicine

In the midst of the embarrassment and hurt of the most public affair ever, former First Lady Hillary Clinton didn't tend to herself, her daughter and her marriage. Instead, she went off to run for the Senate from a state she had mainly visited as a tourist. We all cope in our own way. Success is the best medicine for some.

Elizabeth may have been anticipating questions about why they had held such a major event, perhaps to allay any comparisons with Senator Chuck Hagel who called a full-blown press conference in Omaha, Nebraska, to announce he was not announcing anything about a presidential campaign.

``We wanted you to hear it from us first,'' she said with an understandable tweak of the press corps. ``You've not been so reliable in the last 24 hours.'' She added that an appearance was better than a press release because she wanted people to see ``I don't feel sick. I don't look sick.''

The rush to announce that nothing would change is the hope that nothing will change. If insisting the show will go on makes the bad news easier to take, so be it.

A couple who came to grips with mortality in 1996 should get the benefit of the doubt. You don't have to be rooting for John Edwards to be president to be rooting for Elizabeth Edwards to get better.

(Margaret Carlson, author of ``Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House'' and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 23, 2007 00:33 EDT