by Jim Shepard
Why I Supported the Death Penalty as Governor
I was the ultimate appeal to correct error, not reward regret, emotion, or even religious conversion. Becoming a Christian removes us from eternal penalties.
Public Civility
The original rules of debate for the Constitutional Convention in 1787 did not allow conversation when another member spoke. No reading of any kind was permitted during debate, and no one was allowed to speak twice unless everyone else had spoken once.
Things to Work On
We’re all works in progress. I know that I sometimes don’t make a sufficiently forceful impression. I know that I can seem to people, as Janet likes to put it, too settled on my own road. There’s a little motto painted onto the serape of a toy donkey on my desk: “We’re all here to learn from one another.” I look at that motto every day.
Recurring Dreams
Janet notes that I’m thrifty even with my dreams. I tend to have the same one for weeks running. They stay in my head. My most recent one features Barney Thomas, one of my father’s oldest friends, who’s sick now. My father called him The Judge when I was growing up.
R&R
I give visitors to my office copies of my ten-song tape, “The Gospel (Music) According to John,” which I composed and produced myself.
Friendship
Harry Truman said, “If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog.”
Friendship
When I was state auditor of Missouri, I had seats on the fifty-yard line for Tigers games. When I lost reelection, I couldn’t get into the end zone.
As the Seasons Change
Growing up I never imagined that I would one day need a man to work five days a week just to organize my schedule, let alone that I’d have an after-hours recording that goes like this: “Hello, I’m Andy Beach, scheduler for Attorney General of the United States John Ashcroft. If you’d like to request an appointment, please fax your request to the following number . . .”
Ambition
The presidency is like running the mile. You have to run the first few laps, and run them hard, before you know if you’re really even in the race.
In 1998 Paul Gigot asked, in The Wall Street Journal, “Richard Nixon and Watergate helped make a president out of an obscure Democrat named Jimmy Carter. Can Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky do the same for an equally unknown Republican?”
The Judge
Two months ago he sent a letter I still haven’t answered. Usually I’m a bear on correspondence. I haven’t even finished reading it.
In the dream, he’s as nice as can be. He quotes the first line of his letter: “So, John, the sawbones has come through with the bad news that apparently I’ve got the lung thing everyone’s been worried about.”
Moderation
Do we think a four-time murderer is only “moderately” dangerous? Are drugs in a schoolyard only “moderately” a problem?
In combat, do we want our fellow soldiers to be “moderately” brave?
Are we so sure that “moderation” is always a good thing?
The Long View
Includes the understanding that the verdict of eternity stands above the verdict of history.
False Pride
I’m constantly on the lookout for it.
Losing to a Dead Man
My theory about elections is mirrored in what I hold about all of life. For every crucifixion, a resurrection is sure to follow—maybe not immediately, but the possibility is always there.
Melancholia
I became governor ten years ago. Twelve, I guess. Time flies.
The Hard Road
Like anyone else, there are weaknesses I’ve had to overcome to get to where I am today. A reporter once said that I speak like I’d rather be gigging fish on the Osage, and I dropped him a note telling him that that was because it was true: I would.
Secret Discouragements
Distractions don’t seem to want to leave me in peace when my faith in myself is shaky or my defenses low. Janet calls them The Secret
Discouragements. I think:
—In a February 1998 poll of registered Republicans in New Hampshire, 0 percent named me as their first choice for the nomination.
—Even John Kasich got 2 percent.
—I’m not a natural self-promoter.
—I don’t like the way I look when I eat.
Unfinished Projects
The letter on my computer is entitled Untitled. So far it has the address and no date and two lines: Dear Barney: It was terrible to hear about your terrible news.
Always on Offense
During my first term as governor, Missouri landed both the Royals and the Cardinals in the World Series. There was speculation as to who I’d be rooting for. I rooted for both. My wife and I made a special hat the night before, half and half, red and blue, with bills on both sides. I flipped it around between innings to the team that was batting. An editorial the day after accused me of indecisiveness or double-dealing or both. But a letter-writer from Hannibal hit the nail on the head: there was another way of looking at it, he said. Governor Ashcroft is just always on offense. And he was right.
John Ashcroft in the Pocket of Big Tobacco
Who pays for years and years and years of government litigation? Who is it that foots the bill so the trial lawyers can pocket billions?
On Being Part of a Persecuted Minority
Most of those who criticize me for my religion haven’t even taken the time to discover just what my religion is. The Assemblies of God is a Pentecostal denomination, so I know what it’s like to be a part of a minority and mocked for one’s beliefs. When the mockers come after me, I refer them to two bumper stickers distributed by AG pastor Fulton Buntain: “It’s Never Too Late to Start Over Again,” and “It’s Always Too Soon to Quit.”
On Pushing That Liberal Rock up the Hill
I used to tell my son when he got frustrated about his math scores: You know, there are times that maybe God will call us to do something that doesn’t have an apparent success about it at the moment.
Learning About Values
My father was a pastor and a college president. I remember as a very young boy hearing his early morning prayers and tiptoeing downstairs to sit beside his knees, so that I was shielded by his body as he pleaded for my soul.
Learning About Values
The day before he died, in the presence of a small group of family and friends, he reminded me that the spirit of Washington is arrogance, and that the spirit of Christ, on the other hand, is humility.
Learning About Values
He was on the sofa, and struggled to get up to help family and friends pray over me. I said, “Dad, you don’t have to struggle to stand and pray over me with all these friends.” He said, “John, I’m not struggling to stand; I’m struggling to kneel.” And he left that couch and came and knelt with me.
Why Should We Believe in the Resurrection?
After losing my first race for Congress, I was appointed state auditor. After losing the election to maintain that post, I was elected state attorney general. After losing the election as chairman of the Republican National Committee, I was offered the candidacy as U.S. senator. After losing the reelection campaign for U.S. senator, I was appointed attorney general of the United States.
Learning About Values
My role models are Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, J. Robert Ashcroft, Barney Thomas, and Janet Ashcroft. With no apologies, and in that order.
Standards
No schoolteacher could have gotten away with the behavior that Bill Clinton did. No principal, no college president, no corporate president. That he wasn’t forced to resign tells me that our standards for the presidency are lower than they are for virtually any other job in America. And that, to me, is a disaster.
Deception
How can we expect individuals to be faithful to us if they’re not faithful to the people in their own families?
Government
What’s in My Heart
Have I been the man I could be? No. What’s in my heart? What do I spend my time thinking about? Could I at any moment make a clean breast of it to people; let them see, so here’s what I’ve been thinking?
I get teased for starting every staff meeting with that phrase: “So here’s what I’ve been thinking.”
Having Good Memories
Is like having gold in your spiritual bank. Nothing can take the place of them. Nothing can diminish them. Nights I can’t sleep, I remember floating on my back with Dad down the little stream behind our farm, the sun on our faces, the leaves spiraling overhead. When one of my colleagues from across the aisle is going on about this or that victimized minority, I remember my father and The Judge taking three straight Saturdays to help me with my soapbox racer. Their faces come back to me when I don’t expect them, and when I do. Their faces are a gift I have to be strong enough to carry.
Mr. Perfect
Janet gets a kick out of it whenever a publication decides I’m Mr. Clean or Mr. Perfect or whatever they’ve decided to call me. She’s happy for me but she always makes a wry little list of recent shortcomings to keep my head from swelling. “All well and good, Mr. Perfect,” she said after the most recent article, in the Southern Partisan, “but you still haven’t called Barney back.”
Unfinished Projects
Dear Barney:
Terrible to hear about your terrible news.
Don’t want to lecture an old lawyer on the law.
Know full well that spirit of Christ is humility.
Imagine how it felt to read you never thought you’d
“find Bob Ashcroft’s son in the pocket of Big Tobacco.”
Full slate.
Sleeplessness.
Wanting to write forever, feels like. Took stock, made notes, as way of preparing self.
Really took stock.
City on the Hill.
Dad’s Twenty-One Life Lessons
# 4 Silence sometimes shouts.
# 5 Creative self-doubt fertilizes the field of creativity.
# 7 Never eat your seed corn.
# 8 When you’ve considered all your options, work to expand your options.
# 11 The lives of fathers and sons are intertwined; when one dies, the other is diminished.
# 12 A father should try to pass on not only his strengths, wisdom, and insight, but also how to handle weaknesses, failures, and insecurities.
# 13 When you have something important to say, write it down.
# 15 Little things mean a lot.
# 21 Saying good-bye is a way of beginning to say hello.
#22
When I was eight, my father took me to the sleepy Springfield airport, once a World War II training field. He was an amateur pilot. We walked up to a 1941 Piper Cub, climbed in, and took off. A few minutes later, he shouted over the engine noise:
“John, fly the plane for a while.”
“What do I do?” I shouted back.
“Grab the stick and push it,” he said. I did. We went into a sickening dive. He pulled us out. He had a good chuckle, and I had a good lesson: Actions had consequences. And when I put my hand to something, I could make a difference.
The Melancholy Truth
Each of us is required to exercise leadership, even if it’s limited to our personal relationships.
Groundswells of Support
The Judge said when a politician claimed there was a public outcry for him to run for office that it meant that his mother and father thought it was a good idea. A groundswell of support meant that an aunt and uncle agreed.
My houses are filled with plaques and honorary pictures, keys to various cities: temporary acknowledgments of the offices I held, not indications of the man I am, or hope to be.
Flattery
Think about it: virtually any positive remark you could make about Jesus would be true.
The Long View
I try to adopt a forward-looking approach, focusing on what I might become, not on what others are saying about me today.
Attitude of Gratitude
My father didn’t allow us to use the phrase, “I’m proud of . . .” “Say you’re grateful for it,” he always said. “Not proud.”
God doesn’t ask us to sacrifice our children to Him. He sacrificed His Son for us. Pride doesn’t enter into it, here. Gratitude is the appropriate response.
Inner Reserves
Six weeks after my brother’s funeral, my father had a massive heart attack.
What Family Is All About
My brother had lived in the same town and used to drop in on him every other day. My father told him he didn’t need to feel as if he had to come by all the time. My brother answered that a phone wouldn’t work for what he wanted, because sometimes he just wanted to lay eyes on him.
Good Fortune
The story of the Asian man who commissioned a work of art to represent good fortune, the artist free to choose any form or method of representing it. He chose three lines of calligraphy:
GRANDFATHER DIES
FATHER DIES
SON DIES
The wealthy Asian said, “How can this represent good fortune? Everyone dies!” The artist said, “The good fortune is in the sequence.”
Gullibility
When someone promised my father something, he assumed that that person was telling the truth. Every so often someone would say to me, “Your father sure was gullible.” But who’d want to be raised by a cynic? Believing in the best and giving others the benefit of the doubt may not be the most astute financial advice, but it’s the only spiritual advice.
Despite Everything
Despite everything, I could hear sometimes in my father’s voice the way a certain insecurity invaded his thoughts. A few times he said to me, “If I weren’t a college president, I wonder if anyone would still care about my opinions.”
Carrying the Ball
When people say pictures don’t lie, they fail to realize that our favorite pictures try to suggest that our best moments are persistent moments. They’re not. We might have looked like that for a second, but then our hair moved, our clothes wrinkled, our expressions got tired, our faces sagged back to normal.
Writing
There’s something about being able to put writing down and pick it back up that makes it special. Maybe we have a struggle getting what we need to get out face-to-face, or on the telephone. Maybe the deliberate pace of writing allows us to express ourselves more clearly.
The Reason for Discipline
The very nature of Judeo-Christian culture is choice-driven.
Sunday School
When I was in Sunday school one of our songs went like this:
Be careful, little eyes, what you see;
Oh, be careful, little eyes, what you see.
For the Father up above is looking down in love;
So be careful, little eyes, what you see.
Punctuality
My father was never on time: he was always early. On time was not an option. If you weren’t early, you were late. We were always the first to church, the first to school, the first to work.
More Important Things Than Me
Because of his ministries, he was never home in the summer. At Little League I’d look up and see all the other dads. As I got older I realized that the most important thing my father ever taught me was that there were more important things than me.
Road Trips
Once I was an appropriate age, I was regularly invited to go along on his ministry trips. Everyone talks today about getting involved in their children’s worlds. My father invited me into his.
Hindsight
For a while, I thought he was ignoring me. It turned out that he was building me.
Respect
Once when I was twelve, I had just heard him address a group of college students, and he turned to me and said, “What do you think, John?” He asked my opinion. You know what that said to an adolescent boy?
When I traveled with him, he quizzed me about tensions or contradictions in any of the concepts he’d been dealing with. I wanted to be able to respond correctly, so I listened as if nothing else mattered.
Our Own Little Prisons
Do yourself a favor: the next time you’re driving with someone and you see that faraway look in their eyes, and you wonder what’s going on in their heads—ask.
Courtesy
Even in his latter, potentially lonelier years, my father was passionate about taking the pressure off people. He was always adamant about one part of his dinner invitations: “Come when you can and leave when you want to.”
Discovery
I’m a fan of the discovery school of education. When education focuses exclusively on comprehension, a crucial spiritual element is lost. An educated person is someone who’s become addicted to the thrill of discovery. If someone tells me they’re feeling prematurely old, I tell them: buy a telescope, go visit a new culture, work through a college textbook.
Open Your Eyes
There’s a spot on a twisting farm road near our place in Greene County where, at the right time of year, in the right weather, tarantulas make their crossing. Most drivers don’t even notice, but I like to stop and watch, and I’ve been known to pick up one or two and take them home to Janet. I’ll set one on the kitchen counter when I know she’s coming. She’ll scream loud enough to make me think it’s all been worthwhile, but she doesn’t appreciate it. She tells people that it’s a family joke that I enjoy and she endures.
“Why would you do that?” someone might ask. That’s the wrong question. We saw something new. We enlarged our lives.
Cookies
My father never let people leave without putting something in their hands. He developed a signature gift, a plaque he had produced for the sole purpose of giving away. The calligraphy read, As long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper. I’ve never been sorry for anything I’ve given away (whereas the same is not true for anything I’ve kept or purchased).
