Respect for those who finish the job A few weeks ago, I found myself inspired by an enemy. His name is Derek Jeter and he plays baseball - very well - for the New York Yankees, my least favourite team in any sport. The moment occurred during a critical playoff game between the Yankees and the Detroit Tigers. Jeter, who plays the position of shortstop, ranged to his left to field a bouncing ball, winced with pain and fell to the ground, his left ankle broken so badly it required surgery. But what got me was how Jeter handled adversity. Slow-motion replays revealed that after his ankle snapped, he rolled over on the ground, reached into his glove and - in obvious agony - flipped the ball to the Yankee second baseman, Robinson Canó, to keep the Detroit base runners from advancing. Jeter completed the play. Watching the action late at night, in the quiet of my den, I have to admit that I choked up a bit. As a supporter of New York's other baseball team, the lowly Mets, I have spent substantial portions of the past 17 summers hoping that Jeter would fail at everything he did. But there is no denying class. Flat on his back, on the dirt of the Yankee Stadium infield, Jeter was never greater. There was no quit in the Yankee captain - and I had to acknowledge it. The memory of that night came back to me a few days ago when I saw that Jim DeMint, the Tea Partying senator from the state of South Carolina, was giving up his seat only two years after winning a six-year term, so he could become the head of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. It's hard to know for sure why the South Carolina Republican is surrendering his power as a senator; it's possible an unseen factor could have forced his hand. But if we take him at his word, Mr DeMint is simply leaving the Senate early of his own accord to do something he sees as more meaningful. All I could think was: this Jim DeMint is no Derek Jeter. He didn't complete the play - and that tells us something about the leaders of the conservative movement today. Many of these people talk a conservative game. But their actions on the field of play suggest a lack of a practical, conservative temperament. I think we can all agree that a conservative believes in taking personal responsibility and, to me, that means finishing what you started. Ronald Reagan, the hero of modern conservatism, captured this sense of mission by identifying himself with a sports hero he played in the movies - "the Gipper," George Gipp, the Notre Dame football star who, even on his deathbed, was still trying to help his team succeed. But our current crop of conservative leaders is proving to be surprisingly flighty - if not downright narcissistic. After losing her bid to become us vice-president in 2008, Sarah Palin quit her job as governor of Alaska and wound up starring with her family in their own television "reality" show. Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, passed on the opportunity to run for the Republican nomination for president and hosted a Fox News programme. Now, after Republican reversals in the 2012 election, Mr DeMint is following his own divergent path, walking away from the Senate with a nonchalance of Dean Moriarty heading out on the road. It seems out of character for a public figure who pledged to live by the letter of the constitution. If he had read the document carefully, Mr DeMint would discover we have a chamber of Congress for people who want to serve two years and go their own way. It's called the House of Representatives. He took an oath to "faithfully discharge the duties" of a member of the Senate, where denizens have six-year terms so they can serve as a stabilising force in Washington. Like so many conservatives in the land, Mr DeMint seems more interested in talking about the government than in doing something about it. In explaining his departure to CNN, Mr DeMint noted that he had "spent most of my life doing research, working with ideas and marketing and trying to sell" conservative solutions to the American people. Joining the Heritage Foundation, he said, "is like coming home." In other words, Mr DeMint is more comfortable on the sidelines - where rightwingers can make big bucks gabbing about what's gone wrong in the world. They aren't looking to win one for the Gipper any more or to finish the job like a Jeter. They are dreamy sorts, off in a world of their own.