Politics and Terri
Schiavo
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web. June 18, 2005
After Terri Schiavo was finally
allowed to rest in peace on March 31, we hoped she would also have been granted
in death what she surely would have wanted -- an end to the bitterness that
divided her family and made her private suffering a public spectacle. For
the American people, the episode was a terrible lesson in what government should
and should not do, in what is properly within the scope of our political leaders
and what is not.
And so it was heartbreaking yesterday to see Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida thrust
himself back into this tragedy just two days after the results of Ms. Schiavo's
autopsy showed that her condition had been beyond hope and beyond therapy, that
she most likely had been in a persistent vegetative state and that her
relatives' allegations that she had been abused by her husband were false.
For most of the nation, that news provided closure on a wrenching episode.
But not for Mr. Bush, who asked a state prosecutor to investigate Michael
Schiavo, Ms. Schiavo's husband. Mr. Bush said he wanted to clear up
discrepancies in Mr. Schiavo's statements over the last 15 years about the time
that elapsed between his finding his wife on the floor and his 911 call.
If such discrepancies existed, Mr. Bush surely knew of them long before
yesterday. To seek an investigation now seems tactical, an attempt to
deflect attention from the autopsy report.
Of all the politicians who tragically failed to understand and respect the
sanctity and privacy of family life in this case, only Mr. Bush seems determined
to save face by disturbing the family's peace further and berating those who had
been saying all along that he was going down a terrible road.
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