Jean Carnahan managed to reach across the political aisle with Republicans | Opinion

Honest with us

Jean Carnahan played an important role as U.S. senator in voting her conscience to oppose the nomination of fellow Missourian John Ashcroft for U.S. attorney general in 2001.

She was not only a successful first lady for Missouri, but also managed to reach across the political aisle with Republicans on key issues. She died Jan. 30.

Her husband’s popularity propelled him to run for the Senate, only for him to die in a plane crash that sent her to the Senate by appointment in 2000. But in a special election to retain the seat, she lost to Jim Talent, who was not as a good a senator as either Jean Carnahan or Claire McCaskill.

One last thing: She voted to send America to war with al-Qaida after they attacked New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

This was her legacy, because while her time in the Senate was short, she showed that being a senator can be a good thing for a public official.

Public service can indeed be an honest job for an honest person. That’s who her husband, Mel Carnahan, was, and that’s who Jean was, too. They were honest with Missourians.

- John Huerta, Merced, California

Another choice

A simple question: Why can’t the Republican Party find a better presidential candidate than one who has been found liable by a jury of sexual abuse and liable by a judge for fraud in business transactions?

- Richard Robison, Overland Park

The same, right?

If some on the right are worried about Taylor Swift’s influence on the presidential election, they need to remember that they have Ted Nugent.

- Jack Myers, Overland Park

Another apology

Kudos to Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley for confronting Facebook leader and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and asking him to apologize to families whose children were victimized by his social media company. It was the right thing to do.

Now I would ask the senator to issue his own apology to the public servants and others injured and killed in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which he encouraged through his announcement that he would challenge the election results and his legendary fist pump.

- Mark Fitzpatrick, Kansas City

Situational crisis

GOP legislators have been complaining for months about how bad our southern border crisis supposedly is. They told us people on the terrorist watch list were coming across the border. They told us fentanyl was coming across the border and killing our children. They told us the border needed to be closed and a massive immigration policy change was needed, immediately!

Well, a bipartisan bill is on the table, and now a bloc of congressional Republicans say the problem is not so bad that it can’t wait for 14 months (until Donald Trump is reelected?).

Seems they don’t really want to do anything about the border — they just want to campaign on it.

- Michael Cunningham, Kansas City

Trump’s hijacking

Donald Trump’s attempt to strong-arm Republicans into scuttling the proposed bipartisan immigration bill (and consequently the planned military aid to Israel and Ukraine that are linked to it) because “A Border Deal now would be another Gift to the Radical Left Democrats,” as he said on social media, is dangerously self-serving. America has already suffered the terrible consequences of having simultaneous presidents not so long ago.

In 1968, candidate Richard Nixon, fearing successful peace talks in Vietnam would give his Democratic opponent an advantage, sent an envoy to South Vietnamese leaders promising a better deal if they would drag their feet until after the election. It became clear how little knowledge Nixon had of Vietnam’s complexities, as the war expanded over the next four years, bleeding America of lives and treasure but certainly not providing the better deal he promised South Vietnam.

Trump, like Nixon, is making his political future his priority. American government can’t function without bipartisanship. Nor can it function without fully informed legislative and executive branches. Others without the exclusive knowledge and weight of responsibility for the decisions they make shouldn’t attempt to usurp their leadership roles.

Immigration, Israel and Ukraine demand immediate action by those elected to do so, not partisan foot-dragging.

- John McDonald, Ferguson, Missouri

Electric realities

David Mastio’s intemperate hit job on electric cars cherry-picked partial truths from the negative column while ignoring demonstrable truths about gasoline cars. (Jan. 25, 10A, “An inconvenient truth: Electric cars are real garbage”) My husband and I have been electric-car owners since 2012 and know dozens of people who’ve made the switch from gasoline cars. None would go back.

We recently visited Norway, where 80%-plus of new cars are electric. The very practical Norwegians love electric cars because they work better — even in winter. They pollute much less, don’t stink, are wonderfully quiet and enable home charging for all but the longest trips.

Imagine not having to queue up at a gas station every week or so — especially in winter. Electric cars can be powered by multiple renewable sources (wind, hydro, solar). They can provide power back to the electric grid, making the grid more resilient and minimizing the cost of deploying emergency gas-powered generators.

Many countries still offer electric-car subsidies, but there have always been immense direct and indirect subsidies and tax loopholes for the petroleum industry — which don’t include the costs of oil spills and the geopolitical costs, including wars, of supporting oil production — and of propping up vile petro-states.

- Donna Oberstein, Overland Park