John Y. Brown, III: Courage in the Arena

This post isn’t about being a US Senator.

It’s about something much more important that is a valiant human trait that transcends partisan politics and is worth acknowledging when witnessed no matter what the playing field or political party.

A little over 103 years ago on a night in many ways like tonight, former president Teddy Roosevelt gave his famous “Man in the Arena” speech that has found itself over the past century hanging on office walls of business and political leaders, in athletes locker rooms, in dorm rooms of aspiring young people and in the quiet offices of millions of others just trying to find the courage of their convictions.

But tonight is a little bit different. I can’t read the speech’s most famous lines without inserting feminine pronouns for the masculine pronouns that were standard during that era. Because tonight a young, bright and steely woman from Kentucky seems to personify TR’s words better than about anyone else I can think of.

You may not agree with her party or her politics but you have to admire her pluck and pugnaciousness.

As I said, this is not intended to be a partisan post and that is not my objective. Rather it is a post admiring someone who dug deep down and found the courage of their convictions to dare greatly—when it would have been easier to take a pass. But life doesn’t reward those who take an easy pass…and may or may not reward Alison Lundergan Grimes in her quest to be Kentucky’s US Senator. But she sure has my respect for throwing her candidacy into the arena, so to speak.

I wish her luck…and bow to her courageous undertaking.

Here’s TR’s most quoted segment of his famous speech (with my edits)

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the woman who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends herself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if she fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I have a feeling that if TR were alive today, even though he was a Republican, he might find a way to give a furtive wink and a nod to Alison Lundergan Grimes for personifying his inspiring words. And even though TR can’t, I can. And do.