Real-Life Courage
Erica Goode, U. S. News, 9 December 1996

One of the hallmarks of adulthood is accepting that human beings are a good deal more flawed than as a child one was led to expect. Adolescents are apt to meet hypocrisy and cowardice, even in their everyday, humdrum forms, with startled indignation. The average adult hardly registers surprise. Children believe in love stories, in campaign promises, in David taking on Goliath - and winning. Adults know that things are, well, a little more complicated.

Still, when we set out to instruct our own children, we look for examples of two-legged creatures at their best. We may snicker when someone old enough to know better champions love at first sight, or insists that a politician will really lower taxes ("Grow up!" we may murmur smugly), but secretly, most of us hope that somewhere out there, in the hearts of our preachers, our soldiers, our public servants, lie the qualities we were taught to admire, the virtues extolled daily on the airwaves, in sermons and in the hallways and chambers of Capitol Hill.

Occasionally, we find what we are looking for. More often, searching for integrity and moral courage, we turn to fiction. We sit our kids down and plug in a video: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or It's a Wonderful Life. Or we pull inspiration from the bookshelf: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, for example.

It was a well-worn copy of Lee's novel that Dr. David Kessler, who announced last week that he would resign from his post as commissioner of the U. S. Food and Drug Administration early next year, read over and over growing up on Long Island. He was a shy, nerdy-looking boy, whose bedroom resembled an office and who spent an inordinate amount of time with his nose in a book. Kessler, retiring from the FDA after six years of battle with some of America's most powerful lobbies and whipping the sluggish agency into action, is not all that different now. He's still kind of nerdy looking. Beneath the political savvy, the banter, the pediatrician's bedside manner, he's still shy. And he doesn't look much like anyone's image of a great crusader.

His critics, and he has many, probably wouldn't see him as a role model. Stocks of all the major tobacco companies rose sharply with news of his resignation. Some Republicans, who detest his regulatory fervor and claim that he has in some instances delayed approval of potentially lifesaving devices, greeted him imminent departure with glee, as did the makers of breast implants and vitamin supplements.

Yet it is an unusual day when someone does not come up to Kessler and thank him for his courage in standing up to the tobacco industry, for his persistence in doing what he thinks is right. Whatever one thinks of his tenure, it is difficult to dispute his integrity, or the moral force of his actions.

Moral courage is rare because it requires a willingness to walk away - from prestige, from one's livelihood, in extreme cases from life itself. Perhaps taking a cue from Harper Lee's Atticus Finch, Kessler signaled his willingness to turn his back on Washington from the start. "We're renters," he would say of his family's house in Bethesda. Or "I don't want this job too badly. I can always go back to looking down kids' throats." In a city where the lesson is "Do as I say, not as I do," David Kessler is somebody you can tell your children about. A little nourishment for that secret hope.

Entered July 2001.