John Ashcroft's power grab: The saga of a troubled—and troubling—attorney general

Reason, June, 2002 by Brian Doherty

One reason the very Pentecostal Ashcroft has been able to make the headway he has in national politics is because, despite his demonization as a zealot, he's always been more Ned Flanders than Cotton Mather. He's never fought back at his critics with fire and brimstone. Instead, he's more likely to appear in friendly surroundings, such as Orange County, California's famous Crystal Cathedral, and quip, "I always thought that if I was accused of being a strong Christian there was enough evidence to convict me."

As he shifted his political ambitions from Missouri, where serious Pentecostalism is less outre than elsewhere, to the national stage, Ashcroft has insisted again and again that "it's against my religion to impose religion on people." At least once, though, while speaking to the Christian magazine Charisma, he let slip that "I think all we should legislate is morality."

Yet it's safe to say that Ashcroft is a gentler kind of modern religious man, a compassionate conservative before it was cool. As senator he worked to allow religious groups to administer federal aid of various sorts. He made new flextime requirements one of his major concerns-so parents can attend Little League games (as, he notes glumly in his memoirs, his traveling preacher father didn't) and take care of scraped knees.

It's worth noting about Assemblies members that, as historian Blumhofer says, "When they look at the world, the divine is quite immanent to them." Practices such as morning prayer meetings in the office are as natural as breathing to Ashcroft, even if they are anathema to a large segment of the populace he is supposed to serve. His strong and oft-expressed religiosity makes for an awkward relationship between Ashcroft the cop and the beat he walks.

Born to Lose

Take a quick look at his resume, and you'd conclude that John Ashcroft has had a stunningly successful political career. A deeper read, however, suggests something more complicated, a pattern of embarrassing defeats and hollow victories.

After graduating from Yale in 1964 and the University of Chicago Law School three years later, Ashcroft taught law at Southwest Missouri State University--a position of such vital national importance that he used it to get an occupational deferment during the Vietnam War. His political career began poorly with two defeats, the first in a GOP primary while running for Congress in 1972. His respectable 45 percent showing in the primary brought him to the attention of Republican Gov. Kit Bond, who appointed Ashcroft to a midterm vacancy for state auditor. But Ashcroft lost the job when he actually had to face the voters in '74.

It was all uphill from there--at least in Missouri, and at least on paper. In 1975 he was appointed to assistant attorney general of the state. In 1976, he squeaked through a tight election and became Missouri's attorney general. He went on to serve eight years in that post, followed by eight years as governor and then six as U.S. senator.

But Ashcroft's political tenure in Missouri seems more comic-gothic than inspiring or statesmanlike. Events just didn't give him many occasions to rise to. Instead, we see Ashcroft signing the papers to disincorporate the city of Times Beach, victim of a notorious dioxin scare; urging tourists to avoid his state lest they interfere with an ongoing FBI manhunt for neo-Nazis; petulantly refusing for a time to return a commemorative silver dinner set to its rightful owner, the U.S.S. Missouri; commuting a death sentence because the condemned man's attorney told the jury "Why sully your hands with this piece of flotsam?"; being sued on behalf of a fetus whose lawyers claimed was illegitimately imprisoned inside a ne'er-do-well mom; legalizing rape due to a clerical error; begging constantly for federal aid as his hapless state was battered by floods and crop failures; and unsuccessfully bowing and scraping on Donabue to General Motors execs in the hopes that they would site new auto plants in his state. Colorful, sad, besieged place, Ashcroft's Missouri.