Patton Dodd has a good piece over at Slate about Ted Haggard’s “restoration,” or to be more precise, what his restoration looks like vs. what it should look like.

Money quote: “The problem for people like Ted Haggard … is that he was in a position of public trust. Once fully lost, that trust can never be fully restored. Robert Downey Jr. can become an A-list actor, ruin himself with drugs, sober up, and become an A-list actor all over again. A businessman, a scholar, or a parent can do something similar. Why can’t Haggard? Because his very public career was based on the antithesis of his failures.”

Dodd, it should be noted, was Haggard’s writer and editor for eight years. He now hangs his hat over at Beliefnet.

Dodd has also posted this YouTube video from Mike Jones, the former escort whose allegations of gay sex and drug use initiated Haggard’s first fall from grace: