"None of us wants to be reduced to the sum total of our mistakes."

[MonteLukast]

"Yet, it's uncommon to be able to rise above them, without becoming paralyzed by guilt or regret, and devote your life to making the world a more just place."
--Cathleen Falsani

This is a quote from an article about Ted Kennedy, but I also think of JRE when I read it.

None of us wants to be reduced to the sum total of our mistakes.

Say what you will about JRE, there was passion in his campaign.
There was sincerity in his message.
There was love in his marriage.

If we have a hard time believing how this man could lie so much, that's because... what we knew of him before WASN'T a lie.

It's too difficult to believe that such horrid lies and such beautiful, sincere advocacy could reside in the same man. So, we fill in the blanks. We say he was a liar all along. We say his motives were self-serving in the guise of public service. It makes more sense. It's a lot less cognitively dissonant.

None of us wants to be reduced to the sum total of our mistakes.

May JRE rise above his mistakes, as surely as Teddy did. Without paralysis, with full devotion to making the world a better place.

[Ninga]

1. There is a small difference and it is this. JRE stumbled long after the Clinton/Lewinsky affair.

In fact, JRE was a Senator during the hearings, that was in the mid '90's.

So, fast forward ten years later, and he blinked. He decided in that split second of bad judgment to throw caution to the wind and indulge in illicit sex, setting aside his wife, his children, his legacy and us. But it wasn't just one night, it was the beginning of many many lies, and the most glaring one being that he still saw the mother of his new daughter, when he told his wife it had been over long ago. The father of all lies.

Yes, he lost a son and his wife has cancer, but this world is a much much different place than in the days of Kennedy's indiscretions when Teddy in the face of bad decisions, took responsibility sooner rather than later. Today, there is no place to run no place to hide cell phone cameras everywhere and money to be made by everyone, none of this should have been a surprise to him. JRE has no standing because he doesn't hold office, he has no leverage with the public because he has no podium.

Because he was only a one term Senator, he has little to stand on in terms of the legacy of his votes, policies and bills passed under his authorship. The good he did was very little in terms of what good needs to be yet accomplished.

He wasted his promise. It is gone and others have slipped into the stream of history to take the place he once occupied.

Hillary and Obama have what Clinton and Edwards were never able to muster...and that is strength of character and the ability to own up quickly and move on....Teddy had it too.

[Inspired]

2. True, but the first step in rising above these mistakes is to tell the truth.

And that is where he seems to struggle the most.