Edwards demurs on political future
Wife reports 'good success' in cancer battle
(CNN) -- A month after losing his bid for the vice presidency, Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina said Thursday he does not know if he will run for office again, but he plans to stay in the public arena "to fight for the causes that we care about."
Edwards, in an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," telecast Thursday night, also said he does not plan to return to the lucrative personal injury law practice that made him a multimillionaire.
"My heart's now in public service, and so is Elizabeth's, and I think that's where we'll stay," Edwards said. As for a return to elected office, "that's a decision we'll have to make down the road, and we have other priorities right now."
At the top of those priorities is Elizabeth Edwards' battle with breast cancer. The senator's wife, who joined him for the interview, told King that with chemotherapy, "We've had good success so far in reducing the size of the tumor."
She said, "My biggest concern really has been the loss of hair, which the kids thought was pretty amusing. I have not lost all of my hair, but a lot of it.
"Without this wonderful wig, I think I look sick, and I don't want my children to think of me as sick, because I'm not."
After undergoing eight rounds of chemotherapy over a 16-week period, Elizabeth Edwards said she will have surgery in early March to remove what remains of the tumor and surrounding tissue. She will then undergo six weeks of radiation treatment.
"I just have a belief that I am going to beat this," she said. "Every indication is that all the news I've gotten really has been good news, so I feel pretty confident. I'm making those plans for the next 40 years."
The breast cancer was discovered the Friday before the November 2 election, when Elizabeth Edwards underwent a mammogram and an ultrasound. She said the radiologist "had a pretty grim expression on her face when she came in and read that ultrasound, so I was pretty confident about what the results of the needle biopsy that I was going to have the following day was going to be."
After being told that delaying treatment until after the election would not make a difference, the decision was made not to disclose her illness until after the vote, she said.
"I thought it was probably not the right thing to throw that out during the election," she told King. "It would have distracted people from issues, and perhaps people would have thought it was some sort of a scheme or something. I couldn't have done that."
John Edwards will leave the Senate in January, when his six-year term expires. In June, the Edwards family will move to rural Orange County, North Carolina, near Chapel Hill.
Elizabeth Edwards said if her husband decides to run for president again in 2008, he will have her full support.
"I think that he is a unique and powerful voice, and I think that it's a voice that we need on the national stage," she said.
John Edwards said Democrats should not "overreact" to the results of the 2004 election, which saw the party lose ground in the House and Senate, in addition to losing the White House.
"It was a close election -- 100,000-plus votes in Ohio, and John Kerry would be sworn in as president of the United States in January," he said.
"Looking forward, there are things that both of us care about personally that I think are also important for the party," he said.
"Our faith is enormously important to us. Our family is obviously enormously important to us," Edwards said. "Both of us have worked hard all our lives and believe we have a responsibility to look out for those people around us, including contributing to our community and our country.
"I think those are values that the American people embrace, and they are things we need to be expressing."
