Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow have been giving the country a brief break from the politics of personal destruction in recent days, another sad angle to their shared story: It took life-threatening battles against cancer by prominent figures in each party to introduce a few rare moments of civility into Washington’s grinding partisanship.

Somber compassion mixed with hope for long survival continued to dominate Washington parlor talk last week as Snow, President Bush’s press secretary, underwent surgery for a malignancy found in his liver two years after he learned of a cancerous colon. Just five days before, Edwards, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, announced much the same thing: Breast cancer diagnosed in 2004, which she thought she’d beaten, has spread to her bones.

For the rest of the country, the twinned news was a poignant reminder that politicians and those close to them are people too — not only the smack-down warriors who can appear like one-dimensional characters in a video game. Call this phenomenon the politics of personal misfortune, a reminder that even the most ambitious competitors in the public arena aren’t immune from hardships that befall every private life.

Sure, there is some truth in the charges of self-centeredness amid the wall-to-wall coverage about Edwards and Snow. Millions are suffering with cancer, so why does it take someone well-known to the press corps to spark a flurry of detailed stories about treatment? The answer is that Americans generally pay more attention to the plight of famous people — and if such news provokes conversations around the country about an important national issue, that’s a good thing.

Something I learned from the coverage is just how far we’ve come in the war against cancer, which President Richard Nixon declared n 1971 when he pumped $100 million into research. Medical experts say Edwards and Snow are examples of those who would have died long ago had it not been for the benefits of such research.

Unlike the early days of that cancer research, the focus now is less on finding cures and more on treating a chronic disease, much as the medical community learned to do in the battle against AIDS. Thanks to national determination and the resources of the federal government, neither cancer nor AIDS is a guaranteed death sentence anymore.

Edwards and Snow now have a chance to symbolize living with cancer, not dying from it. In this way, they are helping communicate to the nation what the medical community and cancer patients have long known. The potential benefits to that: Those diagnosed with cancer, as well as their friends and relatives, have role models for the fight ahead. Elizabeth Edwards was quite moving on this point in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” Asked whether she was in denial, Edwards countered that she and her husband are instead determined to “deny cancer any control over us.”

Debate about whether John Edwards should end his campaign to care for his wife seems to have reached a rough consensus that the couple should go on and do everything that they could have done without this disease in their lives. And that shows how attitudes and scientific progress have changed: When Snow and the Edwardses were children, it was assumed your life was effectively over the moment you learned you had cancer.

Perhaps even more so than sports or show-business stars, big-time political figures can draw attention to, and effect change on, non-political issues relating to their personal lives. By their nature, those close to national political power tend to reflect the country’s basic values and cultural norms. They try to be seen as recognizable figures who remind us of our neighbors, friends and family. And so when crisis engulfs such a figure’s life, the average American may find it easier to develop empathy than in the case of a more distant celebrity, such as a baseball slugger or TV actor.

This phenomenon is not limited to personal tragedy. Many forgave Bill Clinton’s infidelity, for example, because on the surface it seemed not all that different from the problems in so many marriages. There was even an adviser to Clinton’s 1992 presidential bid who insisted that the campaign’s polling revealed plenty of empathy for the candidate among suburban couples — precisely because the Clinton marital woes, and how the couple coped with them, reflected these voters’ own experiences with marriage at midlife.

In the end, of course, the Clinton saga took the politics of personal destruction to new heights. Now, the capital is seeing a reverse negative of that: Two prominent figures fighting for their lives — including very political careers — while working to make their remaining time meaningful for themselves and their families. As Snow graciously acknowledged from the White House podium after Edwards’ diagnosis, that is possible: “She’s living an active life. And a positive attitude, prayers and people you love are always a very good addition to any kind of medicine you have. So for Elizabeth Edwards, good going; our prayers are with you.”

Such a disarmingly human sentiment from the chief keeper of White House message discipline. It’s a message for Snow, too.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.