I met Max Cleland while serving as director of the Pebble Hill Foundation in Thomasville, Georgia. I lived and worked at Pebble Hill Plantation, a beautiful and historic site, one of the seventy or so hunting preserves in the Red Hills region that includes Thomasville, Georgia and Tallahassee , Florida. Max was Secretary of State for Georgia. We became casual friends and he stopped several times to share lunch with me as he traveled between the Georgia and Florida capitals. He was a vibrant man destined for a great future, despite the fact that he was terribly injured as a soldier during the war in Vietnam.

Our paths crossed again, almost twenty five years later when he arrived to honor the opening of the Georgia National Cemetery in Canton. It was great to see him again. His struggles with PTS Disorder and the vicious political partisanship of the past quarter century had taken their toll. Giving a very detailed and forceful account of the creation of the Georgia National Cemetery, he left an inspiring record of the birth of this newest of the national cemeteries. A few weeks later I received in the mail a copy of his book, Heart of a Patriot. Like many books I did not have time to read it, consumed as I was with work at the time as director of a struggling young museum.

When I finally got around to reading Heart of a Patriot last month, it brought back to me the story that had unfolded in the newspapers and news magazines over the decades. Like so many veterans injured in the long war in southeast Asia, Max came home only to spend months of grueling medical treatment and rehabilitation at Walter Reed Veterans Hospital. Few at the time had much knowledge or even empathy with those who suffered from PTSD. So Max struggled emotionally as he searched for a way forward, finding himself back in his parents’ home without career prospects.

Politics offered the possibility of influencing events and even of providing a livelihood. A Georgian, he gravitated towards Georgia politics, eventually connecting with Jimmy Carter’s campaign for governor and serving as Secretary of State.

With Carter’s victory in the presidential campaign of 1976, Max accepted appointment as head of the Veterans Administration which included oversight of Walter Reed Hospital. The agency and the hospital were simply overwhelmed by the number of veterans, amputees like Max, but others whose health had degenerated because of their exposure to the defoliant “agent orange” or suffering from addiction, drug dependency, and depression. Strategies for helping veterans reenter mainstream life were proving ineffectual. Funding and administrative leadership had proven inadequate. Max’s leadership and presidential backing promised improvement, but Carter’s presidency was crippled by runaway inflation and the Iran hostage crisis. Defeat was waiting in the wings as the Carter administration disintegrated.

Max found himself at loose ends again, and the excitement and authority he had enjoyed had masked his underlying symptoms. They reemerged, still undiagnosed and still untreated. Politics again offered an escape. Senator Sam Nunn’s decision not to seek reelection fell like a thunderclap, shaking the political landscape. Max ran for the vacated seat and won. Power and service, fulfillment and meaning, again crowded out pain and PTSD symptoms.

Jumping ahead six years, Max ran for reelection in a changed world. The undigested changes brought by integration had opened a window in Georgia-and southern- politics, and presented an opportunity for Republicans to assume the mantle of the old Democratic Party. Conservatives, angered over court decisions and threatened by the rise of Black political power and costly welfare programs spawned by Democratic policies, were resurgent. Resurgent for the first time since Reconstruction.

Congressman Saxby Chambliss entered the race. Meanwhile a revolution had occurred in the ways of funding political elections. Corporations were deemed to enjoy the rights of individuals, political action committees (PACs) were funding political ads with out-of-state money.

The contest in Georgia was close. Max’s slender lead held until the Chamblis campaign backers came out with a TV ad showing Max beside Osama Bin Ladin. The implication was clear: Max had failed to support the second President Bush’s determination to launch a war in the middle east and was soft on national security. Southern politics are often about the mythology of the military representing southern ideals-perhaps it is the result of generations of southern congressmen using congressional seniority to situate military bases in the south. Or the tradition of the Celtic warrior reincarnated as the Confederate soldier. Ironically, Max was a decorated veteran while Chamblis had avoided service because of a football injury. It’s worth noting that George W. Bush had also avoided active service.

By this time, the take- no -prisoners- endure -no -compromise approach of the Newt Gingrich-“Contract with America” crowd had come to dominate the party and as Max explains, Karl Rove’s influence over the White House had expanded executive power and deepened the political divide. Max’s lead shrank in the closing weeks of the campaign and Saxby Chambliss won a narrow victory. What Max seems to regret most is that, although he had been appointed to the 9-11 Commission, the Bush administration never did a thorough job. Rumors that the Saudis, important allies to both Bush the father and Bush the son, bore some blame for the Twin Towers attack have persisted.

Max’s account of his efforts to support John Kerry’s bid for the presidency is well worth reading because of the similar way in which both Max and Kerry-both decorated war heroes-were discredited to voters by direct campaigns attacking their honor and service-attacks that were vehemently countered by another veteran, Senator John McCain. It was Max who introduced Kerry at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Kerry’s decision to have Max speak made it clear that the two shared similar ideals.

In today’s political environment, I think Heart of a Patriot is more relevant than when it was written ten years ago. And, I want to share an opinion: adopting a political strategy of trashing the service of veterans running for public office is about as low as it gets. And it is even worse coming from candidates or elected officials who have not served in war. Whether the cause is honorable or justifiable will always be subject to debate, but to those who have served we owe respect.