Use professional career for evaluations

During the recent Senate questioning of Judge Kavanaugh to determine his fitness to be a Supreme Court Justice, the Democrats apparently found nothing in his entire distinguished professional career, so went back to his high school and college days to come up with reasons why he should not be approved.

Judge Kavanaugh may have made a bad choice at a small gathering while in high school, and he drank too much beer while in college. Being a very good family man, it seems he is not deserving of the picture the Democrats tried to paint of a sexual pervert and rapist. Now we have everyone attacking Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam for a yearbook picture that he might be in. Once again, maybe we should look at the rest of his life as a guide to whether he is a racist or if the picture was just a weak effort at humor from 35 years ago, if he was in it.

He was high school salutatorian, graduated VMI where he was president of the honor court, earned an MD degree and served eight years in the army as a medical officer, a majority of his cabinet secretaries are female and his inaugural parade was the largest and most diverse ever. Not exactly the biography of a racist.

I wish everyone would agree that events from high school and college, especially from 35 years ago, should not be used to evaluate people today. It is pretty well proven that teens' brains are not completely formed, they do not assess risk well, and many times they make bad decisions. Let's try to limit evaluations to what a person did during their professional career and not teenage mistakes from a different time and culture.

Michael Haase

Mount Prospect