Maybe it’s the glass of wine I just drank — I’m not sure all this makes sense. I’m thinking about King Arthur having the babies killed because of the prophecy about Mordred, in order to preserve his vision of what Camelot could be, and Jed Bartlett lying about his MS because he was afraid the voters wouldn’t elect him if they knew, and he hoped to do so much good.
That’s the temptation, isn’t it, for someone who runs for office out of a need to do good, that it can become easy to justify all kinds of compromises if that’s your end goal.
And on the one hand, it’s not reasonable to expect our leaders to be perfect people. It just isn’t. If that’s the standard, no one would ever deserve to be elected.
And on the other hand, there has to be a line, I think. Where the line should be drawn — that’s the hard part. Sometimes it’s clear to me; sometimes, not so much.
No conclusions tonight.