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here's the thing... Bush was, at some level, elected President, and one of the spoils that goes to the victor in this case is the opportunity to gather trusted advisors together to form, among other things, the White House Staff and Cabinet. The catch, of course, is that Cabinet level positions require approval from that "other" branch of the federal government.
Chances are pretty good that if you were paying attention eight years ago when a real doofus got into the White House there may have been some choices made by same said doofus that you didn't agree with!
Know what... that's OK! No President has likely ever selected a cabinet that met with complete approval... and if they did one would have to guess that one party controlled both branches. (I leave the judicial branch out of all of this since, at least in theory, they are supposed to be above all that party based political stuff!)
Now before anyone points out some of the more catastrophic blunders in selecting Cabinet Secretaries... the system is not perfect.
The thing to remember is that we, as voters and citizens, don't know the whole story!!! Unless we are fortunate we only know what the media tells us. Now I would never trade a free press, but let's be honest, the media has been hanging on the left side of the line for a very long time now, and with competition for eyeballs getting downright nasty, that little thing called profit motive rears it's ugly head too.
So, if we take a balanced look at things I think that many would agree that most of the selected positions have been filled by people that have great reputations, and seem, at least as far as we can tell, to be reasonably balanced, rational folks.
This leaves the press and the Democrats with little to complain about, so when it turns out that a selectee maybe harbored an illegal alien... boom... she's outa here.
And when a selectee has opinions that mjust might be frightening to a (hopefuly) large majority... it's time for a field day.
But let's look at this from another point of view. Is it possible that, regardless of his views, Ashcroft does indeed love and respect the law enough to enforce it? It is possible, because I, for one, can see no reason why a President-Elect would name someone who couldn't possibly pass the test... it weakens the administration before it starts... which doesn't make a lot of sense.
Remember too that all of these senior positions are filled for two reasons... the first is the named office of course, but the second is as advisors to the office of the President. In this case we have a nominee who has strong personal beliefs, and someone who isn't afraid to acknowledge them (which, in today's climate, impresses me - not that he had much of a chance of weaseling out of it!)
President-Elect Bush did not win with a landslide (excuse the understatement) and certainly does not have any kind of mandate from the people. This is going to be difficult enough as it is, I can't imagine he would purposely put problems in his path... and I'm certain that the party leadership, who really run the show, wouldn't let him.
One final thought... if you think Ashcroft is bad, imagine the next guy on the list... mr. Single-Bullet-Theory hisself!
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