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Talent for deception: a centrist, straight-arrow image masks a right-wing, ethically challenged record.

Article Excerpt
BACK IN 1984, A SINGLE RADIO BROADCAST FOREVER changed the life of James Talent, a young lawyer in Missouri making his first foray into state politics. It was the peak of the Reagan era. God and country were hot topics, and religious broadcasters were cranking at a fever pitch. James Dobson, who heads Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization, was hosting his daily radio show from Colorado Springs. His guest that fateful day was Luis Palau, an evangelist and author of It's a God Thing. After a heated religious broadcast, Dobson wound up his program by entreating his listeners to "trust Jesus Christ" as Palau led them in "a simple sinner's prayer."

Over in west suburban St. Louis, Talent, in the midst of a campaign that would eventually earn him the job of state representative, was listening to the program on his car radio. At Dobson's exhortation, Talent pulled over into a school parking lot, got out of his car, went down on his knees, bowed his head and accepted Christ.

"Today, this young man from Missouri is a United States Congressman who shares the Good News of Jesus Christ in the political arena," reads the conclusion to Talent's conversion drama on the Web site for the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association. Talent himself has said about Dobson and his own religious awakening, "He is the instrument through which I committed my life to Christ. It is the single most important thing that has ever or will ever happen to me."

Fortunately or unfortunately, that story isn't known to most of his constituents, although Talent is now in his 10th election campaign, trying to unseat U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan, the incumbent Democrat. In fact, Talent's electoral successes have come about partly due to his image as a soft-spoken, mild-mannered, rational-thinking policy wonk who would never raise his voice, utter a mean word about his enemies or take God's name in vain. Much as with U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose lost Senate seat Talent is trying to recapture for the GOP, one imagines Talent muttering "dadgum" when he gets angry or frustrated.

But unlike Ashcroft, who is an unabashed conservative, Talent has consistently presented himself as a moderate, even a centrist, and most Missourians are...