48,960 Votes Attorney General John Ashcroft is best known to his fellow Missourians. They are his people, the ones among which he was raised in his formative years in the charming wide spot in the road known as Springfield. They elected him to be their Attorney General once upon a time, and even Governor from 1984 to 1993. They understand the man better than most people do, and have greater insight into his character. He seems on the surface to be a viper, a hissing predator waiting to strike at whatever target crosses his path. That’s just his personality seen through a TV screen, though. Folks who know John Ashcroft are said to be touched by his devotion to God and country. The son of a Pentecostal minister, he starts off every morning with a prayer session with his staff. When Presiden’t Bush tapped the Yale grad (’64) to be the AG, he called him "a man of great integrity, a man of great judgment and a man who knows the law.” So, now you know. You can be all of that, and still lose a Senate race in your home state to a dead man. The record shows that Mel Carnahan, deceased at the time, beat out Ashcroft by a margin of 48,960 votes (with a bit over two million total votes cast). Of course, if you believe the People Against Ashcroft (www.geocities.com/againstashcroft/), Missouri voters would have done America better by electing him, keeping him out of the Attorney General’s chair – but then, that would have given the Republicans an insurmountable lead in the Senate, negating Jim Jeffords’ ability to change the dynamic thereof simply by shedding his elephant skin. It’s difficult to gauge which could be worse, and it is moot musing at best anyway. He is where he is, does what he does, and there apparently wasn’t a more qualified corpse around to fill the bureaucratic appointment. This is all old news, of course; Missouri selected Carnahan’s wife to fill the Senate seat, and she has gotten predictably mixed reviews. The general feeling in Missouri is that she needed a little time to learn the ropes in Washington, and that she will do well upon re-election. All that is left to be explored is just what it means when the people who know you best decide that a dead man would be a better representative than you would. Think about the dinnertime conversations that likely went on leading up to the 2000 elections: “Honey, who are we voting for this time?” “Carnahan.” “But honey, he died. Can’t we vote for John Ashcroft? He used to be our gov--” “We’re voting for Carnahan. He’ll do just fine.” It’s not feasible to have a lot of faith in someone who is in a coffin, six feet underground. Only one thing can lead the public, in large numbers, to commit to such a radical idea (and believe you me, Missouri is anything but a hotbed of radicalism). That thing is fear. And the only thing worse than fear of the unknown is fear of the known. Ashcroft was a very well known quantity in his home state. They knew him to be a loose scholar of the Constitution at best, with a grand rewritten version of the supreme law of the land stuck in his head. They knew him to be intolerant of any of human nature’s frailties; even today, he insists that all those around him be as perfect as he perceives himself to be. They knew that Carnahan, while room temperature, was still a safe bet for Senator. They knew what he would say… or, more to the point, what he wouldn’t say. Of course, the levelheaded people of Missouri, who know good leadership when they see it (Harry S Truman comes to mind), probably didn’t take into account the opinion of the likes of the ACLU. But they might actually agree with the ACLU’s statement that, “the vast majority of Ashcroft’s policy decisions indicate that he fundamentally disagrees with core tenets of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as they are currently understood and applied.” Ashcroft himself does his own case no favors when he gets caught by the quote machine saying things like “It’s said that we shouldn’t legislate morality. Well, I think all we should legislate is morality.” Heard enough? They surely had in Missouri. In this day and age of suspect politics, one has to wonder why a President (who basically ran as a moderate) would appoint someone whose beliefs are just barely to the left of Mussolini’s to fill this important position. In all of the fifty states, the Attorney General’s office is subject to the will of the voters. But in Federal parlance, the President gets to hand pick the nation’s top lawyer, who now has his thumb in every bowl of soup, from the war on drugs to the war on terror, and all the little wars in between. In fairness, he did pass muster before the Senate confirmation process, but the Senate was in Bush’s vest pocket at the time. Were the nomination to be made all over again, he would not even garner a hearing today. I’ll stand by the official opinion of the people Ashcroft has served most of his life. They knew dead weight would be preferable to having this man represent them. They probably even hoped that the ridicule would be enough to drive him out of politics altogether, so out of step are his views where our freedom is concerned. The fact that Bush appointed him, despite so resounding a rejection from his own home state, is only a greater indication of what voice this Administration follows: the one echoing inside our fearless leader’s vacuous head. Paul Heller 09/16/02 << back to the archives
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