Do Michael Vick, John Edwards, Newt Gingrich, or Lynette Fromme Deserve a Second Chance?

It's never hard to find evidence of humanity's foibles and failures. But boy, howdy, have we had a recent bumper crop in the news: Michael Vick, John Edwards, Rick Pitino, Donte' Stallworth, Lynette Fromme, Mark Sanford, and on and on and on....

From lead stories in newspapers, websites and broadcasts to the comic strip Doonesbury, the past fortnight has been filled with story after story about celebrity guilt and contrition, followed by a dollop of redemption and rehabilitation.

Do these people deserve a second chance? How do we figure that out? There may be a lesson for us in how our primate cousins deal with transgression. We'll get to that shortly.

Consider Michael Vick: Former star NFL quarterback who was guilty of running and participating in a dogfighting ring. In prison for 19 months, and now he's out. In the weeks between his release and his eventual signing last week with the Philadelphia Eagles, the punditocracy weighed in on whether he should even be allowed to try playing pro ball again. My local paper, the Dallas Morning News, saw fit to address the issue in a house editorial:

"Yes, Vick served his time, and if someone else wants to hire him – someone Vick didn't horrify and embarrass – that's up to that employer. But the NFL should have learned its lesson, and we hope its member teams have better sense than the guy in charge."

Which would have left Vick in the same position as millions of other ex-cons who emerge from prison, prevented by law or employer preference from using their best skills.

Shift to the target of a couple of recent weeks of Doonesbury comic strips: The Family. This is a Washington-based Christian group that apparently includes as members or affiliates recent scandal bull's eyes South Carolina Gov. Sanford, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nevada) and former U.S. Rep. Charles W. "Chip" Pickering of Mississippi. (The Family theology may not be exactly mainstream Christian, by the way. See Jeff Sharlet's explanation on the Daily Show.)

According to news reports, members of The Family work through an internal system of confrontation, confession and reconciliation. How well does it work? Sanford notoriously was still seeing his paramour until he was outed by the media. Ensign is accused of having his parents pay off his lover and her husband to the tune of $100,000. And Pickering's ex-wife said that some of his affair actually happened in the C Street complex owned by The Family. Both Ensign and Sanford are still serving in their elected offices.

Should they have quit? Should highly visible college basketball coach Rick Pitino step down? Should one-time presidential wannabe John Edwards be exiled from polite company if Rielle Hunter's child is his? Should Mike Vick never be allowed to play quarterback again and be reduced to hawking exercise equipment in late-night infomercials? Should Lynette Fromme, the former Manson Family member and armed stalker of President Gerald Ford, have been let out of prison at all? (Should the media stop calling her by her old nickname "Squeaky?") When is it just to forgive and let people move on?

Pretty much every religion or ethical system worthy of the name spends a lot of effort struggling with these kinds of questions. Let's dip into some of that struggle to see if we can find any useful answers. Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is the president of The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. So how about it, rabbi? Should we forgive any or all of these people?

"Let's start with a basic premise found in Jewish thought: one can only forgive that which was done to them...This business of people running around forgiving others for what they did to third parties is ridiculous. It probably indicates that those doing all that forgiving are filled with rage at people who actually did nothing to them. They don't need to forgive them and probably shouldn't be so angry at them in the first place."

The whole celebrity outrage thing makes no sense? I get that. But to the extent that someone like Michael Vick realized that his job description included "role model," whether he wanted it or not, does he deserve some punishment beyond the strictly legal?

"The issue is whether or not people think he has been sufficiently punished. If he has, and if one believes in the law, he has, then he should get a second chance. Does that mean that he should be hired to sell dog food or pet sit, probably not. But should he wander the world like the Biblical Cain (or the one from the old David Carradine/Kung Fu show, "Caine," for that matter) unable to restart his life because he mistreated his dogs? I don't think so."

Hmm. But how do we decide when punishment is sufficient? How do we decide when it's time to grant forgiveness?

The Family has its standards for forgiveness that it applies to the political leaders who come to its apartment building on C Street. Jeff Sharlet, contributing editor at Harper's and Rolling Stone, knows something about how this works because he spent a bit of time with them and eventually wrote the book "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." (And while he's been getting significant media attention recently, I do believe that PD got Sharlet on the record first after the Ensign and Sanford stories broke in June...)

So how about it, Jeff? How does The Family approach the challenge of deciding when forgiveness is appropriate? Have the now-public failures of its members given Christian forgiveness a black eye?

"I strongly reject the notion... that the Family has given Christian forgiveness a bad name. These powerful men are a tiny, tiny minority within Christianity. They have, however, given a bad name to their brand of holier-than-thou public piety. But then, that never had much to do with honest Christianity.

"Keep in mind, what we're witnessing with Ensign and Sanford and Pickering isn't just 'forgiveness.' That's a virtue. Covering up sin is something else -- and a core idea of the Family.

Sharlet quoted from his book, offering an example of what the Family teaches about sin and its consequences -- or lack thereof:

" 'Love forgets. That's what God does with your sin and mine when it's under the Blood. He forgets all about it.'"

Was Garry Trudeau being unfair to The Family in his recent Doonesbury strips, which portrayed the group as essentially amoral and willing to even consider murder to protect its members?

"Emphatically not. He's mocking very powerful men who see their religion as a get-out-of-jail card for their own moral transgressions even as they pursue morally punitive policies toward others. More importantly, they've used their religion as justification for policies that undermine democracy around the world."

So maybe that's not where we should look to help decide how to balance justice and forgiveness. Let's turn to Frederic Luskin, a psychologist who co-founded the Stanford Forgiveness Project in Palo Alto. Should Vick get that second chance? Would letting him toss a touchdown the NFL undermine the cause of justice?

"Justice is not just punishment and keeping bad people away from the good people. It is the possibility for rehabilitation as well. When people forget that I think it does a disservice to us all."

Well how about the politicians, most of whom have offered some kind of public apology, if only after they got caught?

"A mea culpa without paying any price isn't worth anything... And the person needs to show some change in behavior. "

Now let's focus on chimpanzees, bonobos -- and Newt Gingrich. Our guide is Everett ("Ev") Worthington, a psychology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and one of the nation's top researchers on forgiveness. The topic of forgiveness is far more than academic for Worthington: His mother was murdered a decade ago and the man he believes did it walked free. And yet, Worthington said, he forgave him. There's no conflict, he said.

"I could forgive the murderer of my mom but still think it is appropriate for justice to occur."

Forgiveness, he said, is all between your own ears – a personal decision. Justice, on the other hand, is a societal issue. Most people's internal moral and religious compasses have been set long before they come to justice/forgiveness decisions, he said. Christianity, for instance, teaches that people should forgive without strings attached (though the guilty person is obliged separately to repent), while Judaism attaches forgiveness to an effort by the guilty party to make restitution and even to seek forgiveness.

But every culture must have ways to express justice and reconciliation, Worthington said.

"Any society has to have mechanisms to protect boundaries and mechanisms to restore community. If everybody who violated a boundary were just exorcized from society, society wouldn't last very long."

Studies of other primates, such as chimps and bonobos, have identified revenge and reconciliation strategies, he said. In those societies, as in our own, the guilty party needs to find ways to re-establish trust. And the aggrieved parties need to be at least open to the possibility of allowing those bonds to be reestablished. Evolution has hardwired this truth into our very brains.

Which brings us to Gingrich. The conservative GOP leader, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, has a public resume that includes at least two instances of marital infidelity (once during the very time he was attacking Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky) and a finding by the House that he violated that body's ethics standards . (Should we be surprised none of that shows up on his official bio?) But you can find him these days quoted widely and respectfully, and even mentioned on lists of potential Republican presidential candidates.

How does that happen?

Turns out that the old saying about "forgive and forget" has the order backwards: We forget and then forgive. And both follow a predictable pattern, Worthington said. Research shows that our response follows what is called a logarithmic curve – dropping a lot in a hurry, then at a slower and slower pace. (Here's an example of that kind of curve.)

If the guilty party gives us enough reasons to trust them, eventually many of us tend to move in that direction. So a decade past Gingrich's departure from the House, and after speeches, books, and myriad other trappings of respectability, he's able to take advantage of those hardwired reconciliation instincts we also see in chimps. It's a feature of primate society with which Gingrich is very familiar, Worthington said.

The politics of chimp society became better-known in the 1980s because of a book called, appropriately enough, "Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes." The book was written by a researcher named Frans de Waal, now professor of primate behavior at Emory University. It described in detail the revenge and reconciliation rituals of the chimps of the Arnhem Zoo.

What's the link to Gingrich? In 1994, he famously recommended de Waal's book to freshman members of the House. Which leaves us where? Let's end with a thought by Rabbi Hirschfield:

"Both forgiveness and justice are religious/spiritual values. There must be a place for both in any healthy culture. If it feels like they remain in tension, then one has probably found a good balance between the two."