Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft, ’67, Discusses Leadership, Elections, and Government Service at Law School Event

Attorney General John Ashcroft, '67, at an event in Billings, Montana, in 2007. (AP Photo/Billings Gazette, James Woodcock)
Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft, '67, at an event in Montana in 2007. (AP Photo/Billings Gazette, James Woodcock)

True leadership isn’t just about governing and it isn’t about mandates—it is about inspiring people to join you in the pursuit of something better, former US Attorney General John Ashcroft, ’67, told a Law School audience last week in a virtual event that drew 268 members of the community.

A leader, Ashcroft told the audience, focuses not on uniformity but on unity—people with different beliefs coming together around a common but important objective.

“Leadership is the ability not merely to call people to the minimum, but to call people to their highest and best,” he said. “That happens by modeling and inspiration, not by mandate and imposition. Cultures are never great cultures because people repair to the minimums. Cultures are great cultures when people go far above what is legally required of them and operate at a much higher inspirational level.”

The conversation between Ashcroft, a longtime public servant who has served as a US senator and the governor of Missouri, and Dean Thomas J. Miles, the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics, was part of the Law School’s Election Series. Although Miles and Ashcroft did not dig into the specifics of Tuesday’s presidential election, they did discuss Ashcroft’s own experiences as a candidate and the rewards, risks, and sacrifices of government service.

“The price or the currency of leadership is sacrifice,” Ashcroft said. “It is the ability to say, ‘I want to do this so intently that I will pursue it so that others are drawn into the process.’”

Ashcroft served as attorney general of Missouri from 1976 to 1985, governor of Missouri from 1985 to 1993, and a US senator from Missouri from 1995 to 2001. In 2001, Ashcroft became the 79th US attorney general and served for four years. As attorney general, Ashcroft led the US Department of Justice through a time of tremendous change in the aftermath of 9/11, including the shift in emphasis toward the prevention of terrorism.

In addition to that work, his proudest accomplishments in public service, he said, were ones in which he was able to pursue and protect important values. As governor of Missouri, for instance, he made schools ones of his key priorities.

“I think the most important job of a culture is the transmission of values from one generation to the next—and a primary value in the American culture, I think, is liberty,” he said. “And for people to exercise their liberties effectively in a free society, education is a fundamental thing.”

As a US senator, he was proud of efforts to curb government overreach, as well as his work on charitable choice legislation that allowed religious organizations to compete for federal grants to provide social services.

Over the course of his career in government, Ashcroft ran for elected office several times and had “every type of election experience you can imagine,” he said. The first was a run for Congress in 1972 that ended in defeat, but resulted in a job as Missouri’s state auditor. The incoming governor, who vacated that post upon election, had seen Ashcroft on the campaign trail and had been impressed. He appointed Ashcroft to the position. But two years later, Ashcroft, a Republican, ran for re-election in the wake of Watergate and was narrowly defeated.

Instead, he went to work as a Missouri assistant attorney general, where he shared an office with future US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom he described as “a marvelous human being.”

What he learned from the losses, he said, is that failure can lead to even greater opportunities.

“I like to tell young people … not to be afraid of falling,” he said. “And whenever possible, try to fall uphill.”

Perhaps the most striking—and famous—example of his capacity to “fall uphill” came in 2000, when he was seeking reelection to the US Senate against Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan. Carnahan died in a plane crash three weeks before the election and, after the new governor promised to appoint Carnahan’s widow to the office, Carnahan won.

“I’m the only person ever to have lost his Senate seat to a dead opponent,” Ashcroft said.

The next month, however, President-elect George W. Bush tapped Ashcroft to serve as US attorney general.

The loss to Carnahan was psychologically difficult, Ashcroft told the group, but the possibility of defeat isn’t a reason not to try.

“If you're thinking whether you can sustain the emotional trauma of losing an election—well, I've lost lots of them. And here I am—I'm 78 years old, and I'm still grinning instead of groaning,” he said with a chuckle. “I've had a lot of election experience, and the privilege of public service and the privilege of leadership don’t come cheaply or without risk.”

“But,” he added, “as far as I’m concerned, it’s worth it.”