BUSH MAKES SOLID CABINET PICKS

President-elect George W. Bush is announcing his Cabinet picks, and those first among them are giving enormous reason for confidence. First to be announced was the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Gen. Colin Powell, as secretary of state.

This appointment, which had long been expected, won near-unanimous praise. Powell is an American icon, the son of West Indian immigrant parents who grew up poor in the Bronx and rose through the Army, achieving distinction in the Reagan and Bush administrations. This is the third presidential administration that he will serve at lofty levels.

Next was Condoleeza Rice, the brilliant former provost of Stanford University, who also served in the administration of former President Bush. She will serve in the sensitive post of national security adviser after advising President-elect Bush during the last 18 months of the campaign. Rice, an African-American who grew up in the Jim Crow era in Birmingham, Ala., has a dazzling command of foreign policy issues with a special concentration on Russia.

Bush's choice for the vital treasury post is 65-year-old former International Paper and Alcoa chief executive Paul O'Neill. This is an executive with wide business and government experience he did an apprenticeship at the Office of Management and Budget in the Ford administration who clearly thinks outside the box, as the popular saying has it.

Bush appointed lifelong friend and Midland, Texas, oil executive Don Evans his commerce secretary. Evans chaired the Bush campaign and headed up his most-successful-ever fund-raising effort. He is a man with Missouri ties who is widely praised by those who know him. A devout Christian, Evans is the friend who recommended to Bush that he read the Bible daily, his habit for years now.

For the agriculture post so important to America's agribusiness sector, Bush selected Ann Venemann of California, who will be the first woman in this spot. We would love to have seen native son Charles Kruse of Dexter get this job, and he got as far as making the short list.

Then came the blockbuster, especially for Missourians.

On Friday morning, Bush announced his nomination of U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri for attorney general. Ashcroft, who lost his Senate seat to the late Gov. Mel Carnahan, is a splendid choice for this most sensitive of Cabinet posts. He won nationwide plaudits, in sharp contrast to Vice President Al Gore, for the gracious manner in which he conceded after the votes were counted Nov. 7 despite a raft of legal questions about the lawfulness of electing a dead man, further complicated by the questionable legality of seeing his widow appointed to the seat.

Ashcroft has won many elections in Missouri -- attorney general and governor -- but this most competitive of men has also tasted from the bitter cup of defeat and is the better for it.

He is a man of impeccable integrity with a distinguished record. He was an excellent attorney general of Missouri before easily winning two terms as governor, and all this background commended him to the president-elect. He is just the sort of nominee to go in and begin the tough work of cleaning out the Janet Reno Justice Department and restoring it to its previously respected place. For all these reasons, Ashcroft will be controversial, a fact Bush had to know.

Altogether, the first round of Cabinet appointments are laudable. The Ashcroft appointment, especially, says much about this president. He has guts, and is willing to fight to get the people he wants.

Good for him.