Dear Alaska,
Please allow us to be uncharacteristically serious for a minute; we're more concerned than usual. It seems that (judging from sparse, high-error-margin, land-line telephone polls), between 20 and 40 percent of your likely voters still support the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Joe Miller.
According to documents only recently released to the public because a judge ordered it, Miller was caught in 2008 using Fairbanks borough computers and impersonating co-workers for political gain. His infraction was only discovered because he tried to cover up by deleting evidence on computers he used to that end. He wasn't criminally prosecuted, but he received administrative discipline.
When co-workers confronted him, documents show, he lied in an attempt to cover up his action, then attempted to coerce the very people whose computers he used into joining him in a negative contract so that they would conceal his offense.
Since news of the borough's investigation of that incident came out, we The Concerned have noticed a near total lack of contrition on the candidate's part. After weeks of stonewalling, denials, and a paranoid "line in the sand" against any questions about his background, he finally came clean about what happened in Fairbanks -- just as a judge was about to rule against keeping records private.
Since the public has learned what Miller was trying to keep secret, he has dismissed the controversy as a trivial matter, as people playing petty personal politics, and even implied that many Alaskans would have behaved the same way in his situation.
Miller has also tried to defend his actions -- and the weeks he spent dodging questions and blocking the release -- by saying that he didn't do anything all that wrong because he wasn't conducting the skulduggery on borough time. He said he was on his "lunch hour," as a part-time employee, when he stuffed the ballot in that GOP poll.
Twenty to thirty percent of Alaskans seem OK with that explanation. Which is fine to The Concerned. But his supporters are still overlooking something. There's a more accurate way to pinpoint the timing: Miller was creeping around during everyone else's lunch hour, not his own.
We've heard many of Miller's steadfast supporters try to say that no one's perfect and that everyone has lied before. Which is true. Every person has lied. Children learn society's boundaries by lying. And politicians start as children.
Some of Miller's supporters are even retreating to the comfortable ground of a single issue vote to justify why they continue to support him. In their minds, if someone invaded his co-workers' computers and the public's trust, obstructed media inquiry, and continues to minimize his offense and demonize the people who have brought it to light, it matters not. All that seems to matter is whether or not he will support one thing: The fight against abortion.
Apparently, they consider that issue more important than being able to trust a senator to do the upright thing. Abortion legislation doesn't come up in the Senate that often compared to everything else, so these voters are willing to overlook any concerns they may have over their candidate's shady behavior.
We The Concerned have no problem with that; we can sympathize. When we buy potato chips, we always have to justify it to ourselves somehow. And we manage like crazy every single time. But the only person we have to answer to is our doctor. As a U.S. senator, Miller would have to answer to the country, and more importantly, to Alaska.
Miller's main rival (according to the most recent polls), Sen. Lisa Murkowski, for instance, was accused of getting a sweetheart land deal from a long-time family friend. She divested herself of the property to quell public outcry -- but the only reason anyone knew about the property is that she disclosed it on a required form. We have also recently learned that Joe Miller has already failed at fulfilling a required disclosure of property held in trust.
Integrity has one common meaning generally. Society mostly understands it to mean acting in a morally and/or ethically upright manner. But it has another meaning: Consistency. Can our friends and colleagues expect us to behave the same way in this situation as we have in past, similar situations? Can they count on us? In a way, all of us have integrity as long as we behave in a way that is consistent with how we've behaved in the past.
All things being otherwise equal, if the ends justify the means over a period of several years for someone, it's a safe bet that they always will. If integrity means consistency, Joe Miller -- who still stands a chance to win this three-way race -- has all the integrity in the world.