There's a story I read recently. It recalled an anecdote about President Eisenhower, who apparently expressed shock and disbelief when told that 50 percent of Americans had below-average intelligence. An appalling lack of understanding of statistics aside, I think I know what bothered the golfer-in-chief.

Hey, Mr. President, someone has to lose.

Take this example. Jean Van de Velde led the British Open by three strokes as he approached the last hole. In other words, he had to hit the ball into the rough, into the water and into a bunker to have a shot at losing.

He hit all three and the grandstand besides, though he saved a triple-bogey putt which put him in a playoff. He lost.

There are winners and losers, you see.

Throughout junior high school and college, I ran for a number of positions. I mostly lost. Once I ran for editor of the student paper at the University of Missouri. My future wife cast a vote against me. I lost that election by one vote (true story).

Almost always, my life was better because I lost. In the case of the editor election, had I won I would have had to take out some serious loans to stay in school. Instead, I took a semester off, earned "in-state" status and used Pell Grants to subsidize my education. I also didn't kill myself with a huge workload. The predecessor in the position had a fairly serious physical breakdown at the end of his term. I would have pushed myself at least as hard and probably would have abused myself at least as badly.

There are times when even the average person agrees that it is better to lose. Take Brian Doyle-Murray. He's Bill Murray's brother. He's had an extremely successful film career, but not as a leading man. He's at least as funny as his brother (at least from what I'm been able to see in his characters), but he's not as attractive (in a physical sense). So he's had to settle for professional success, scads of cash without the attendant fame problems which plague his brother. That "loser" won, see?

But let's get back to people who lose, even spectacularly. Like Jean Van de Velde. Or Walter Mondale.

Poor old Walter. Everyone thought Reagan was beatable (really, it's true). And yet Mondale stumped around America saying "I'm gonna raise your taxes, vote for me". He said a few other things as well, but we don't remember that. All we remember is that Dennis Miller described Mondale in the 1984 election as "getting stomped like a narc at a biker rally". Mondale lost despite the fact that Reagan completely lost track of where he was during a debate, and instead of delivering a nicely-crafted closing statement instead presented a rambling discourse on the aesthetics of California Highway 1. In retrospect, it's pretty clear lost to a dude already showing signs of Alzheimer's.

Walter Mondale licked his wounds, got a cush lawyer job and ended up Ambassador to Japan in the Clinton Administration. I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like a horrible life. Plus, he didn't have to deal with all the attendant presidential crap.

Now, I'm not arguing that people who fail avoid pressure situations and thus live better lives. Not at all. It's just that sometimes when we fail, we realize that what we were trying to attain isn't all that great after all. That there might be something else worth doing. This isn't a destiny argument, either, I'm just talking about perspective.

Take Jean Van de Velde again. After truly screwing up perhaps the "finest moment of his life", as some might have called it, he pooh-poohed the loss.

"There are worse things in life," he said. "Some terrible things are happening to other people. This is only a golf tournament. Yes, I blew it on 18. All it proves is I was capable of being three ahead of the best players in the world on 18."

Which, when you think about it, isn't too bad. That second-place check for $305,250 doesn't really suck, either.

Jon Worley would like to emphasize that he usually doesn't draw on golf for metaphors. Nor does he consider cash an acceptable substitute for friends, food and libations. He would also like to remind people that what Vince Lombardi really said was "Winning isn't the only thing. Trying to win is." Just so you know.