It wasn't until six hours later that they took him down.

-Stephen King, the final line of Apt Pupil and reused by Anthrax in their song Skeletons In The Closet

My freshman year of college I had a roommate from Lancaster, NY. He would later complain about Scott Norwood and the in the crease goal as we have aged.

Sports tends to be the language that men speak. One of the first things we ever talked about was his love for soccer and mine for basketball. He was immediately high on an upperclassman from the Buffalo area named Bryan "Ice" Randall.

I never really knew Ice except for an occasional hello and a few pick-up games. Randall was a quiet humble guy who you would never guess had the talent he had to handle the rock. He was one of the last people you would ever expect to come apart at the seams.

It was with stunning dismay a few years ago that I read about how Ice met his end. The story of how he had killed and attempted to kill his children was published in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. My first reaction was why would such a horrible story be sent out to alumni. It seems apparant though that this is exactly the kind of story that needs to be examined.

A man I knew much better was Dr. Kevin Lang. He was a staff gastroenterologist in my fellowship program and our expert on inflammatory bowel disease. Kevin was also an intensely religious man who even had the nickname "The Preacher" given to him by the endoscopy clinic staff.

It is safe to say that Dr. Lang would be at the bottom of the list of people I would expect to sexually assault a patient. It turns out that my instinct about him was completely wrong. The list of victims is growing in Wisconsin at the clinic he went to after leaving the US Air Force.

Today when I was performing procedures I was joking about facebook with another gastroenterologist. I told him he may never become a US Senator if he did not start networking now. He told me there were too many skeletons in his closet for that to ever happen. That seems impossible to me but many things seem impossible.

We all have skeletons and some of them are more grotesque than others. The horror of every minor and some major mistakes haunt us all.

Another conversation I had today was with a nurse about the competence of physicians. It has always been my belief that I want the most competent physician to take care of me when I get ill. The "niceness" factor is irrelevant if the doctor has no idea how to treat the disease.

Politicians face a world where everything they say or do is gone over for every detail. If there is anything that can be spun into trouble there is likely a pundit there to do the dirty work. It is only a matter of time before the molehill becomes a mountain and Jay Leno has new material.

Personal mistakes can be an indication of problems in judgement. However, this needs to be balanced against the fact that different worlds exist.

The expectations are unfair. It leads to people walking on eggshells and living in fear of upsetting one powerful group or another. It is impossible to lead with the restraints.

Tiger Woods is a great golfer and no amount of extramarital affairs will change that. Pete Rose is still one of the best pure hitters baseball has ever seen even with the gambling. No one can argue the intellect of Thomas Jefferson although he had private failures. States like Massachusetts found it easy to overlook the behavior of Ted Kennedy and some people now are about ready to canonize him.

Was Bill Clinton a great president? No, but some people would make the argument that he was. It is doubtful any of those people would be the women left in the wake of his surging sexual appetite.

There are studies that show we elect the taller candidate. We elect the better looking candidate. We elect the smoother candidate. It has only gotten worse in the media age. The Nixon-Kennedy debate was the first even that brought the new reality.

The peripheral noise created can be deafening. A DUI 20 years ago, state troopers setting up a secret rendez-vous, or how someone voted for something 20 times and against it 20 times in the world of procedural nightmares. The issues get lost.

It is also a world where special interest groups have made single issues take on unprecedented importance. It is frustrating when the country faces financial challenges and a significant voter block is worried about whether candidate X might support gay marriage.

A lot is made in this country and these blogs about religion. It has become painfully obvious that religious affiliation is not a guarantee of moral strength. More importantly, it not an indicator of good judgement either.

Candidates will shift both prior and after elections. People will say things to get elected. They will occasionally genuinely change positions as well.

The hard thing is most of us cannot completely read people we see every day. What chance do we have with politicians?

The Supreme Court made their decision that corporations could spend money as they choose to campaign. The argument has been this allows them unfair influence.

The truth is as a country we have already done in ourselves. We do not vote smart. We can not read anybody. It may be the dishonesty of our politicians but that is what it is.

The thing is it could be better. Nothing is perfect but until we get a grasp of what should really matter we will get the government we deserve.

If your life depended on a round of golf and you could ask anybody to shoot it for you, who would you choose? I bet many people would choose Tiger Woods.

The person that should be elected is the one best for the job.

The sad truth is most of us cannot even be sure who is the best person in everyday life let alone when it is someone running for office.