That's the implications of his wife's latest media pimping.  He would be nothing in this campaign without her.

First comes this video add, where she lauds his unbelievable toughness:

A lot of that is probably referring to his being a lawyer, and all the lawsuits he brought.  Toughness and fighting for others made him a very wealthy man.

But she also noted his being a better candidate for women:

The Salon Interview: Elizabeth Edwards

Another famous spouse has been in the headlines in recent days, of course. But while former President Bill Clinton was busy telling Iowa and New Hampshire audiences that his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, has the experience to be president, Elizabeth Edwards' pitch seems to be that her husband has the guts to make the radical changes a president should be ready to make in 2009, after eight years of the Bush debacle. On Saturday night, at the end of a long day of campaigning, she curled up in light-blue pajamas made of environmentally friendly bamboo for an hourlong interview in her hotel room. She hit Hillary Clinton particularly hard, arguing that John Edwards is, in fact, the better candidate for women: "She's just not as vocal a women's advocate as I want to see. John is."

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.

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.

Nothing really substantive to indicate why John is better.  I think its because he has better hair and fashion sense.

But this part was interesting:

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.

So having admitted it, how do we know she stopped?

Truth is we don't and frankly it doesn't matter.

Say what you will, she is loyal to her husband, and frankly she is the strongest spouse advocate of any campaigner so far.

Edwards is a joke of a candidate, but he has a serious weapon in his wife.