He looks at two people who have recently made the news: the late South Dakota senator George McGovern, who is remembered as losing in one of the biggest landslides in the history of American presidential elections; and Lance Armstrong, one of the greatest winners in the history of sports.
Guess who really IS the winner and who is really the loser?
"Winning" and "losing" have little to do with placing first or getting all kinds of material goodies. It has to do with conducting oneself in an ethical manner and treating others with respect; in short, with integrity:
Yet, though he took controversial stances and paid for it politically, McGovern is remembered today as a man of uncommon decency and principle, a man who was true to himself. When he died, former GOP Sen. Robert Dole saluted him, writing in the Washington Post of how McGovern attended the funeral of Pat Nixon, wife of the man who handed him that bruising defeat. Asked why he would want to be there, McGovern replied, “You can’t keep on campaigning forever.” The remark, wrote Dole, was typical of his former political foe, “a true gentleman who was one of the finest public servants I had the privilege to know.”
If you’ve got to be a loser, there are worse ways to be remembered.
And that brings us to the winner — Lance Armstrong — who made headlines by cheating, allegedly. Armstrong, seven-time winner of the Tour de France, has been dogged by allegations of doping for years. His steadfast defense has been that he never failed a drug test.
But a few days ago, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a damning report describing Armstrong as the ringleader of “the most sophisticated, professional and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.” The report, said to be based on sworn testimony from 26 people, including 11 former teammates, depicts him as threatening anyone who might rat him out and pressing other cyclists to join him in using banned substances.
Some people, like Lance Armstrong apparently, operate on a different moral plane, if you can call it morality at all.
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