The Week - John Ashcroft's nomination to be attorney general ; other political issues

National Review, Feb 5, 2001

John Ashcroft's critics are demanding to know whether he will enforce the nation's laws as attorney general. After eight years of Reno, one can only wonder: Since when is that a qualification for the job?

President Clinton's departing comments on the circumstances of George W. Bush's election remind us, yet again, how fortunate we were to have him as a leader and, in a very real sense, a national companion for eight years. Mr. Clinton's dignity and manly reticence; his simple affirmations of clear goals and plain principles; his intelligence, as rigorous and bracing as it was loath to display itself; his graciousness, to rivals and to associates, marked his entire tenure on the national stage. But nothing so became him as his leavetaking. Conservatives may have had their differences with him on policy, but we salute him as a personal example and, in the largest sense, as a political force for good. We look forward to his understated presence in our national life for many, many, many years to come.

The campaign against John Ashcroft's nomination to be attorney general becomes more disingenuous by the day. His liberal critics say that an AG must be a centrist if he is to enjoy the confidence of all Americans, and that he must support all the laws he is expected to enforce (such as those protecting abortion clinics from protesters). The pedigree of these standards stretches all the way back to . . . well, pretty much to the minute Ashcroft's nomination was announced. The AG he would replace, Janet Reno, was well to the left of public opinion, believing for instance that subsidized prenatal care should be part of any strategy to fight crime. She also opposed federal laws such as those authorizing the death penalty and mandating minimum sentences for drug offenders. It would have been peculiar if she had thought what no serious person does: that every jot and tittle of federal law is wise. Imagine applying the liberals' current standard to other executive departments, such as HUD and Labor. It would mean that nobody would be able to administer those agencies if he were at all skeptical about their missions. No supporter of limited government could be employed in the federal government. Or is that the point?

A speech given by Ashcroft at Bob Jones University was found, upon exhumation, to contain the J-word. "A slogan of the American Revolution," Ashcroft said, "was the line, 'We have no king but Jesus.'" Barry Lynn, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called Ashcroft's reference to Jesus "totally unacceptable," and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League called on him to assure Americans that his "religious beliefs would not dictate" how he would carry out his job. Evangelical Protestants need no lectures on the separation of church and state, since they were the main supporters of James Madison and the First Amendment. But we had better hope that Ashcroft remembers his religious beliefs on the job. Jesus said that His kingdom was not of this world, so that those who declare "No king but Jesus" are stating that they will have no earthly king. The slogan has a history even older than Ashcroft acknowledged, for it was used by radical Protestants in 17th-century England, when kings could, and did, kill people who said such things. One reason America has no king is that lots of those Protestants moved here. If Ashcroft's critics don't want to move to some other country, could they at least keep their historical confusions to themselves?

If the campaign against Ashcroft has been dismaying, it must also be said that the ex-senator's response to it has not been edifying. His early tack has been to pledge his support for hate-crimes laws and to disavow any intention of asking the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. The latter is a huge concession: The first Bush administration asked the Court to overturn that decision, and public opinion has moved in an anti-abortion direction since then. The political logic of this defensiveness is hard to fathom: It's not going to sway Sen. Barbara Boxer or, indeed, any Democrat who wants to damage George W. Bush's administration. Ashcroft would be better off challenging his critics' race-baiting and religious bigotry, about which they have already shown some defensiveness themselves. There is no point in confirming a conservative as attorney general if the price is a promise not to be a conservative attorney general.

If Senate majority (sic) leader Trent Lott had negotiated a plea bargain with Bill Clinton, the president would probably be settling in for his third term. In a deal with Tom Daschle on how to organize the 50-50 Senate, Lott agreed that committee memberships, staffs, and budgets would be evenly split. Daschle had threatened to block the Senate's reorganization unless his demands were met. The threat was empty: The Senate is a continuing body, unlike the House, and could have remained organized as it had been in the last Congress. Still, Lott folded-and not for the first time. Why shouldn't Daschle behave as though he were majority leader when the post appears to be vacant?