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What you put first, you will keep.
After all, most of us wouldn’t mind a bit more money, but when you think about it, you already know where you can get it. You can always steal from the offering plate, push over a panhandling woman, scam a desperate friend. There’s a bit of a trick, though. To get the money, you must put it first. You must put it before your honor, before your empathy, before your friendship.
There are ways to get famous, to gain power or become rich. The real question isn’t whether you want those things, but what you are willing to do to get them.
“What are you prepared to do?” Sean Connery’s character, Jim Malone, asks Eliot Ness in “The Untouchables” about stopping Al Capone.
What are you prepared to do?
It’s the only question that matters. Because you can keep the money or the power or the fame, you can catch Al Capone or climb Mount Everest or drive a Ferrari, but that might be all you’re left with at the end. Do you want it that badly?
It’s a lesson Vivek Ramaswamy will learn, if he hasn’t already, after his campaign for governor of Ohio.
Ramaswamy recently ran an attack ad against his opponent, Dr. Amy Acton, in which the mother who lost custody of Dr. Acton in 1978 criticized her daughter and called her a liar.
The last time Dr. Acton and her mother saw each other, it was in a courtroom and the then-12-year-old Dr. Acton had just finished testifying about how her stepfather had raped her and abused her and her little brother.
Dr. Acton’s mother walked away from her children that day to support the man who hurt them -- a man who had already been prosecuted for raping his own daughter -- and ran away with him to escape the trial.
It is not shocking that a mother so derelict in the care of her children would continue to try to ruin their lives long after she lost the power to physically hurt them, but it is a bit surprising that a politician would grant her the platform to do it.
I suppose being the governor of Ohio is worth a lot to some people. To put it first, you might have to hold your nose and eat all kinds of unsavory dishes.
The current governor, Mike DeWine, a fellow Republican who had endorsed Ramaswamy, was a bit surprised by the ad, too. Horrified, maybe, is a better word. He called it “deeply, deeply troubling.”
But Ramaswamy had his defenders.
Vice President JD Vance told reporters that he “was a little bit disgusted” -- not about the ad, but about Republicans who were “whining” about it rather than focusing on beating the Democratic candidate.
Vance is keeping his priorities straight.
The president loved the ad, calling it “powerful” and saying that it “hit pay dirt.”
I agree that there was plenty of dirt there and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn there was a little payment involved as well, but its power remains to be seen.
It’s certainly possible that Ohio voters won’t know or care about the ad’s backstory and will be hammered into submission by the $4 million Ramaswamy’s campaign is spending to air it. When you repeat a lie enough times, it sort of becomes true, doesn’t it?
And what is truth here, anyway, but an inconvenient pebble making waves in a calm pond? None of this is about truth. It’s about power.
We wonder why it seems more politicians are weak and corruptible. Why can’t we get an honest man (or woman) in Washington?
Well, for one reason, because they’d have to put their political career first to get there.
They’d have to put it in front of a brother reliving his worst memories, in front of three children seeing their grandmother for the first time in an ad attacking their mom, in front of family trauma being thrust into the glare of millions of judgmental viewers.
There’s no job I want that badly.
I don’t envy Dr. Acton dealing with this mess. She did nothing wrong as a child but be born to the wrong mother and it’s not fair that she still has to suffer the consequences of that nearly 50 years later.
But I feel a bit sorry for Ramaswamy, too. Because when this is all over, even if he’s got a new address in the gubernatorial mansion just outside of Columbus, that might be all he’s left with.
He might have the job, but whether or not he realizes it, his integrity will be the payment. He’s willingly made the trade, but I have a suspicion that he might miss it eventually. He’ll certainly be the worse for the loss.
Because, in the end, the garden you tend will grow.
As to everything else? No guarantees, my friend.
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