personam est fatum - Character is Destiny

Of all one hundred members of the US Senate currently serving, the Senator I most admire is a 5'4" woman from Bothell, Washington named Patty Murray. When she did the math on the Veteran's Administration's budget and realized it was over a billion dollars short, because of a misuse of outdated troop numbers, she proposed an emergency bill to subsidize their budget. And when the Secretary of the VA stood before the Senate and testified that they infact did not need this money, Patty Murray gracefully allowed her bill to fail. And when six months later the VA came back, tail between their legs, looking for the money it turned out they needed after all, Patty Murray showed infinite character by not only appropriating the necessary funds, but including an additional 42 million dollars, and not once did she gloat over her belated victory.

I am not now, nor will I ever likely be a resident of Washington state, but if I had the opportunity a thousand times over, I would vote for Senator Murray in any election. I only hope that one day, I will have that opportunity, perhaps some November, for the office of the President of the United States.