George Mitchell was the United States Senator from Maine who served as the Majority Leader when President Clinton was in office. However, his finest hour was not as a Senator.

I’ll wager that most of you do not know who he is.

Mitchell’s accomplishments included being tasked by Major League Baseball in 2007 to investigate the steroid scandals. His investigation resulted in a 409-page report which documented 89 retired and active players involved, many of whom were well known. He served on many corporate boards, including Disney. In Maine, scholarships and schools are named after him.

President Clinton offered him a nomination to the Supreme Court which he declined. He would’ve been a slam dunk for confirmation given the respect and admiration of his fellow Senators. He left the Senate and was then appointed as a Special Envoy to Northern Ireland with a direction to seek resolution of the ongoing battles known (only the Irish could so name them) as “The Troubles.”

“The Troubles” were a lot more than a little trouble.

They were all out war between the IRA and Protestant para-military groups. Every few days brought a bombing, an assassination, and what amounted to a civil war between the two factions. Countless civilians were caught and died in the crossfire. This went on for 30 years with ebbs and flows, marches, protests, bombings in Northern Ireland and in England including an attempted assassination of the British Prime Minister. British troops patrolled cities in Northern Ireland and became identified as being on the side of the Protestant paramilitaries. They too were targeted by the IRA.

If you wanna know all the necessary details about “The Troubles” just Google it and be prepared for a long read. The gist of this 30-year war was the desire of the IRA to have the six counties of Northern Ireland united with the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland and the countervailing desire of the six counties in the North to stay aligned with Great Britain. For all practical purposes, Northern Ireland was “Protestant” to the extent that Catholics were actively discriminated against and had no political power there.

So, Mitchell stepped into this mess and a few years later produced what is known as the “Good Friday Agreement” which effectively ended “The Troubles.” The Agreement was reached 28 years ago in 1998. The Good Friday Agreement was the outgrowth of something called the Mitchell Principles first announced in 1986, and which guided discussions leading to the final agreement. The Good Friday Agreement was voted on by the Irish people and passed overwhelmingly in both the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland. 

Pulling this off was the equivalent of solving the Rubik’s cube while bombs were going off and you were being continuously shot at by while simultaneously dealing with all the political parties and gadflies involved in the process, including the British government, controlling authorities in Northern Ireland (6 counties) as well as the Republic of Ireland (26 counties). Mitchell provided the equivalent of a master class in negotiation, compromise, and resolution. The signing of the Good Friday Agreement included a picture of Mitchell standing in the center between Prime Minister Ahern of Ireland and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain.

For his efforts, he was a demigod in Ireland which was not bad for a Lebanese boy from Maine. Queen’s University in Belfast displayed a bronze bust of his likeness and named one of its programs, The Mitchell Research Institute. He was made Chancellor of that University from 1999 to 2009.

Other honors followed. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999 and the Liberty Medal in 1998. The US–Ireland Alliance created a prestigious exchange scholarship in his name.

And even before his efforts in Ireland, there were scholarships named after him in Maine as well as the local public elementary school. After Ireland, he went as a Special Envoy to the Mid-East to broker an Israeli/Palestinian peace process which was doomed by the unwillingness of the various parties to compromise.

Mitchell is now 92 years old and in poor health. When he was 61, he married his second wife who was then 35 and they have two children, a boy and a girl who was named Claire after an Irish girl who had been blinded by a bomb. His wife was, by all accounts, extremely accomplished (professional tennis management) and very attractive. They were married in December 1994 just before he left the Senate, turned down the Supreme Court and went off to Ireland.

A life well lived but then turned upside down because of Jeffrey Epstein. Because of his relationship with Epstein, the bronze bust in Belfast is gone, and his name no longer appears on the Institute at Queen’s University. His name will be stripped from the exchange scholarship awarded by the US–Ireland Alliance. There is a move afoot to take his name off of an elementary school in Maine. His portrait has been removed from the Maine State House. The Maine scholarships named after him will undergo a name change.

There is no documented suggestion that Mitchell was privy to Epstein‘s crimes. Mitchell has adamantly denied any wrongdoing.

There are three undisputed things about Epstein. First, he was fabulously wealthy with a townhouse in Manhattan, an apartment in Paris, a ranch in New Mexico with a 30,000 square-foot house, a private jet and a private island in the Caribbean. Second, he was a sex addict so much so that his age-appropriate companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, couldn’t keep up and had to enlist other women or girls to service him. Third, he was a “collector” of famous people, all of whom have now been disgraced.

For example, for a post Yom Kippur dinner in 2010, Epstein suggested that Mitchell be invited and that Mitchell‘s presence should be noted in order to induce other invitees to attend, including Larry Summers, the President of Harvard, and Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister of Israel. Mitchell declined the invitation as he declined many other invitations. It appears that Epstein thought Mitchell’s presence would make various of his dinners and parties more desirable for others to attend and, hence, used Mitchell as “bait.”

All of those taking Mitchell’s name off of this scholarship or that building indicate that they are not suggesting that Mitchell is culpable, but only that his name is currently not appropriate. They have the backbone of a slug.

What a cancel culture we have created! It’s probably too late to rename the Washington Monument or the Jefferson Memorial but, if we are following the current mania for calling out perceived and real sins, certainly the fact that they owned slaves would qualify and what would be the problem with taking their names off of all public elementary and high schools?

So, let’s make this personal. Have you ever done something that you would be embarrassed for your mother or father to know? If you are honest, I’m sure there is more than one thing that you wouldn’t want known. I stopped counting at 20. The point is that we all have bad moments, but that doesn’t mean the good things in our lives don’t have value.

So, if George Mitchell fell off the wagon once or twice (and I don’t think he did), should that nullify all the good that he accomplished? The groups and those who want to dishonor him in his old age have not contributed any good that would dwarf the good that he provided.

It seems to be that before someone limbers up their fingers to type on Twitter or to post a social media message, it would be good if they considered their own shortcomings.  Maybe they will remember the 2000-year-old admonition delivered by Jesus when the scribes and Pharisees wanted to know if they should follow the Mosaic law and stone an adulteress to death.

“Let you who is without sin cast the first stone at her.” John 8:7.