What’s so great about being great?

Idon’t have a problem with mediocrity. I’m sure this comes as no surprise.

I’m also pretty sure the first thing that came to your mind was — obviously.

Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. Those of us who run in the middle of the pack tend to have industrial- strength egos.

Would I prefer to be exceptional? I guess, as long as I could be No. 1 and done. Constantly striving to maintain a high- level of excellence seems like an awful lot of work.

And as a wise man once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” This is among the things Dirty Harry and I agree on.

“Go ahead, make my day [ punk],” is another, but let’s leave my feelings about Alex Trebek out of this.

Mediocrity has been steadily losing ground to our national obsession with exceptionalism for years.

I trace the onset of mediocrity’s decline as a stan- dard back to the early ’ 70s when it became an issue during the G. Harrold Carswell’s Supreme Court hearings.

Those opposed to Carswell’s nomination questioned his credentials, his intellectual capacity, even his competence. Granted, Carswell wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier. On the other hand, he did meet other requirements, such as being male, silver haired and having a pulse.

In the midst of the nomination battle, Senator Roman Hruska of Nebraska, gave a memorable speech on the Senate floor in support of Carswell saying, “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance.”

Is it any wonder that Hruska came to be regarded as a George Washington like figure to the mediocre? I don’t know about you, but I still get chills when I read his words.

As a nation, we have never recovered from the rejection of Carswell. Just look at the makeup of the Supreme Court today. Every sitting member went to law school at either Yale or Harvard. We can’t do better than this?

If I seem a bit bitter about Carswell’s fate it is because I had a personal connection to the matter.

At about the same time the Carswell drama was playing out, I was rejected by the University of Connecticut Law School. This, despite the fact that I not only had modest, but exceedingly modest credentials.

In response, I wrote directly to the dean, making the case that if mediocrity can be seen as an attribute to sit on the highest court of the land, did it not stand to reason that the University of Connecticut Law School should also give additional weight to someone of similar distinction?

I never did hear back. This is unfortunate be- cause I would have made a really mediocre lawyer. And while it is true that the country is already awash in mediocre lawyers, I believe that if having been given the opportunity, I would have broken new legal ground. Anyway …

The problem with pur- suing a hobby or interest or goal these days is we have become conditioned to believe that if you ain’t No. 1, you ain’t nothing. And given there can be only one No. 1, where does that leave the rest of us?

Is it any wonder that low self esteem is a problem?

What we need to do is stop chasing exceptionalism and embrace good enough- ism.

A lot of it is how you look at things.

For example, every Thanksgiving Day I run the Manchester Road Race, which has a field of 15,000 runners. I do not win. I do not place in the top 10. In fact, I usually I come in around 8,000th or so.

When people ask me how I did in the race, I say that I beat 7,000 runners.

If packaged correctly, mediocrity can be very impressive.