"My own spirit was crying out in agony. How could this have happened? ... I had served all the time with a burning idealism about my country. How could we who had the trust of the nation have strayed so far afield? There must be answers for my life — for others — for an anguished nation. What was the redemptive answer?"
~ Charles W. Colson in Born Again (1975)

"My heart was getting hard, partly from self-righteousness, partly as a shield against sadness and shame.... For several years I had served as his character witness. Now I felt like a dupe.... Although I wasn't proud of all I'd done, I was proud of our accomplishments. But the scandal now cast a shadow over the whole endeavor, making it seem more like an experience to be explained than an adventure to be celebrated."
~ George Stephanopoulos in All Too Human (1999)

This may be hard for people who don't live here to imagine, but Washington is full of well-intentioned people who believe that they can make the world a better place. Whether they are Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, these folks seek power and influence, at least in part, to enact policies they believe will help their fellow man.

But what about the other reasons people seek power and influence? It's these reasons that lead some to make choices that result in the regrets I've cited above. It's what causes smart and, yes, good people to do things that require hundreds of pages to explain. While this may not go over well with many of my conservative friends, after observing George Stephanopoulos for eight years and reading his new book, All Too Human (Little, Brown), I consider him to be good, as well as obviously smart.

So, how did he end up working for and defending a president most people don't consider (according to polls) to be a good person? The explanation lies in an idea that Stephanopoulos himself brings up: original sin. In what has to be a first in a political memoir, Stephanopoulos writes, "I believe in original sin.... I know that I'm capable of craving a cold beer in a village of starving kids.... I understand that selfishness vies for space in our hearts with compassion...."

I couldn't have said it better myself. However, his application of the doctrine is limited to a discussion of the need for, and limitations of, government. While I agree with him, there are other, even more important ways that original sin affects the governance of a nation. And, as exhibit "A" I offer his book, which is an eloquent testimony to how sin can tarnish even the noblest of intentions.

It's clear that Stephanopoulos' intentions were noble. Given his background, it's hard to imagine how they couldn't be. Talk about a preacher's kid! Stephanopoulos' grandfather, father, uncle and godfather were all Greek Orthodox priests. Some of my favorite parts of the book are his fond descriptions of what it was like to grow up in the home of a priest. His description of his mom's role as presbytera, or priest's wife, will ring true, albeit with a Mediterranean flavor, to any child of an evangelical preacher. When you read his accounts of helping his dad at the Divine Liturgy every Sunday you can almost smell the incense and hear the Byzantine hymns.

It's clear that Stephanopoulos was profoundly shaped by this environment. It produced a desire to do good and a drive to succeed at something. A Greek refrain he repeats over and over again is that "priests serve and immigrants succeed." Since Stephanopoulos realized when he was 14 that he didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps, that left ambition, albeit an ambition mixed with the desire to do good. He found the vehicle for these two drives in politics. It wasn't as a candidate, but as someone who works behind the scenes, advising the candidate on policy matters and helping him get elected.

And, that's the rub. Because if your guy doesn't get elected, neither your desire to make a difference nor your ambition are going to get very far.

After serving on Capitol Hill as a legislative aide and then as Democratic Majority Leader Dick Gephardt's floor man, Stephanopoulos was ready to aim higher: ride a candidate all the way to the White House. But who? As Stephanopoulos makes clear, it had to be someone who could win. That someone, as we know, ended up being Bill Clinton. But, before he tied his future to Clinton's, Stephanopoulos had to become, in his own words, "a true believer."

And, this gave Stephanopoulos' own fallenness the opening it needed. He became convinced that Clinton was the only Democrat who could beat Bush. This was important, not only for the Democratic Party, but for the country as well. But being a "true believer" in the "Man from Hope" meant waiting for the other shoe to drop. After watching his man make the climb from "Bill Who?" to Democratic frontrunner, Stephanopoulos began, as he put it, to hear "the Turks coming." That is, he was wondering what could go wrong.

That "what" came in the form of lounge-singer wannabe (Is that what passes for ambition in some circles?) named Gennifer Flowers. In January 1992, the supermarket tabloid The Star published a story in which Flowers described her long-term affair with then Governor Clinton. Now, Flowers wasn't the first woman to step forward with such a story; she wasn't even the first "bimbo eruption" Stephanopoulos had to deal with. But any doubts he had about Clinton's character, and his role in the campaign, were quickly swept aside. Instead of being furious at his candidate, he became furious at Clinton's enemies.

As he writes, "To me [the presence of a reporter from Fox Television] constituted proof of a conspiracy ... 'It's a setup. Clinton is a victim. It couldn't be any more clear.' Now my initial doubts, which I had partially pushed aside earlier on the plane, were swept away by righteous anger."

That folks, is called rationalization. Stick with Clinton and ignore your doubts because that whole Flowers story was part of a right-wing conspiracy (where have I heard that phrase before?). So he went full tilt after the Flowers story, picking it apart for any reporter who would listen.

The Flowers episode set the pattern for how Stephanopoulos dealt with his doubts about Clinton the man. For instance, even when Stephanopoulos knew that Clinton was being dishonest about his draft troubles, his attitude was "nearly everything we did was justified by what was being done to us." Or, when the Paula Jones story first surfaced, he set aside his doubts and reminded himself that "Paula's cause was being promoted by the same people who were trying to block everything we believe in." In the end, Stephanopoulos, in his own words, "sacrificed my credibility" to defend the Clintons and their program for the country.

This turning your back on what you know to be right is something that my boss, Chuck Colson, knows a bit about. As he said in a recent Breakpoint radio broadcast, "In the midst of Watergate, I overlooked a lot of what I knew to be wrong in the White House because, like Stephanopoulos, I thought that it was vital for America to have my president in the White House — to end the Vietnam War, to save us from the Democrats." Change Vietnam to "unemployment and poverty" and "Democrats" to "right wingers" and you begin to understand why a preacher's kid would set aside his moral qualms.

This ethical proportionalism — justifying objectionable actions by pointing to a greater good being served — is especially jarring when you know that, in addition to being the son of a priest, Stephanopoulos studied Christian Ethics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. "I read Augustine and Aquinas," he wrote, "Martin Luther and Rheinhold Niebuhr, analyzing the fundamental questions of politics ... from the fundamental perspective of what was right rather than what would work."

What happened? Here's where we come back to original sin. Original sin means that even the best people are driven by a mixture of motives — some good, some bad. These impulses are at war within us. In Stephanopoulos' case, his lofty sentiments were at war with his love of the spotlight — the acclaim and influence that assures you a table at Washington's finest restaurants and invitations to all the best Georgetown parties.

For Stephanopoulos, as for all of us, there's a particular sin that helped ensure that when push came to shove, what was right would lose out. That sin is pride. To his credit, Stephanopoulos acknowledges his "vanity" and "arrogance." He acknowledges that he stayed with Clinton, in part, because being around Clinton, having the president's ear, made Stephanopoulos an important man.

But, I'm not sure he's being honest with himself, or the readers, about how much this importance meant to him, and how much it affected his judgment. For instance, he devotes several pages to an account of his quest to get an office near the president. To say that the episode seems petty and self-aggrandizing is putting it mildly.

Then there's the telling chronicle of his battle with political advisor Dick Morris. This consumes nearly one hundred pages, more than the space devoted to his account of the 1992 campaign or the Whitewater scandal. Obviously, the conflict with Morris was important to Stephanopoulos, but I suspect not for the reasons he gives. To hear Stephanopoulos tell it, policy, and not simply personal, differences were at the heart of the conflict. Morris advised Clinton to adopt many of his Republican opponents' agenda — something that was anathema to the liberal Stephanopoulos.

But there was more to it and the key lies in one word: Zoloft — a drug used to treat depression. I don't think it's a coincidence that Stephanopoulos became depressed when he believed he had lost his influence over the President to Morris. Having the Alpha Wolf's ear defined Stephanopoulos, it made it him a success. (Remember, "immigrants succeed.") Losing that influence, as Stephanopoulos admits, was a blow to his pride. And, as three thousand years of biblical tradition tells us, nothing will come between a man and God faster than pride. That's why C.S. Lewis called pride "the great sin." It robs us of perspective. We will do anything to avoid sacrificing our pride.

Now if this is true of an Oxford Don or this obscure Puerto Rican writer, imagine how much more it's true of someone who has actually been at the top. As my boss has told us, once you breathe the rarified air at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, regular oxygen just doesn't cut it. You'll do anything to stay. (Okay, I'm paraphrasing.)

As he said, "I remember how important it was to stay in the inner-circle. The biggest source of speculation in the White House, indeed in Washington, is over who is in and who is out. And if you tell the president what you really think, well, you might end up on the outside." Imagine what would happen if you let your moral concerns get in the way.

You'd have to wait for a table like the rest of us, and you'd be off the "A" list. And, of course, you couldn't go to bed at night secure in the belief that you had helped shape the fortunes of a nation. Swallowing a few moral qualms seems like a small price to pay. That's probably why, at the risk of sounding cynical, Stephanopoulos could express his doubts about Clinton's character when the news about You-Know-Who broke. By then, he was out of the White House and had nothing to lose.

Stephanopoulos calls his book "a political education." A better description would be a cautionary tale. It's a wonderful reminder of the limitations that sin places on all human activity. Even the best-intentioned people can make terrible compromises because they are blinded by their pride and even their desire to do good. As Stephanopoulos no doubt learned at Oxford, the ends never justify the means — whether the end is helping your fellow man or getting a table at the Palm. It's something All Too Human reminds us of.