We talk a great deal in this country about second chances. We give them to the boy who wrecked his daddy’s truck and to the woman who wrote a bad check. I believe in all of that. What I have noticed is that the people who preach grace the loudest are often the least willing to extend it upward.
A man in high office carries a weight most of us will never feel. He takes calls at supper. He signs things he has not had time to read. He is surrounded by people who want something from him, and it is not always easy to tell which of them are his friends. If a man in that position bends a rule now and then, I am inclined to think the rule was not written with him in mind.
I will say the honest thing. I do not hold a powerful man to the same standard as a plumber. The plumber has one job, and if he does it wrong your kitchen floods. The man in high office has a great many jobs, and if he gets most of them right, I am not going to fuss over the few he handled a little loosely.
Every Texan understands this from Friday nights. When the second-string lineman misses curfew, he runs laps and sits out a game, and that is how it should be. When the starting quarterback misses curfew the week of the big game, a wise coach has a quiet word with him and sends him back out on the field. Nobody calls that unfair. They call it wanting to win.
When one of these men gets into trouble, the investigators come running. They want documents. They want testimony. They want to make an example of him. I have never understood the appetite for it. If we need examples, there are plenty of ordinary men who made smaller mistakes, and nobody seems to mind much when they are the ones made an example of.
My grandmother used to say you should never embarrass a man in front of his family. I think that goes double for a man in front of the whole state. When a leader is dragged through the papers, it is not only his name that suffers. It is our confidence in the office. I would rather keep my confidence. It costs less than the truth, and it lasts longer.
So the next time someone in power stumbles, I will offer him what I would want offered to me. Patience. Understanding. A quiet word instead of a courtroom. I will be voting for the Republican for Senate this fall in hopes that the quiet word keeps winning out. My sense is that the other side would rather use the courtroom, for big men and small ones alike, and I do not see the need.
I have never been important enough to need that much grace. I have never been offered it, either.
D. M.