"By almost any measure, the standards we as citizens keep and expect of those we elect to lead us have slipped badly in recent years. Too many of us are willing to look the other way when politicians misbehave as long as they are of the right party or deliver the goods.

"Our celebrity-drenched culture focuses incessantly on the vapid and the irresponsible. Insisting on sterling character seems straitlaced and old-fashioned. We cut corners and sacrifice character for power, money, attention or other ephemeral gratifications.

"Yet character is ultimately more important than all the college degrees, public offices or even all the knowledge that one might accumulate in a lifetime. It's the one thing over which every adult has total, personal control in virtually all circumstances. It puts a concrete floor under your future and an iron ceiling over it. It may be what others will remember about you more than anything else. Who would want to live in a world without it?"

LAWRENCE W. REED, president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, in the Feb. 29 Detroit Free Press.