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Oct 27, 2003 I’m going to come right out and say it: I feel for Attorney General John Ashcroft. Perhaps no public servant of recent memory, save Richard Nixon, has endured the same level of scrutiny, venom, and vitriol that Ashcroft has. The man is truly despised in some circles and, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. To be fair, both sides of the political spectrum need a villain – someone who so embodies everything they oppose that the mere mention of the name begets higher blood pressure and salty language. For the right, it is - and probably will be for a very long time - the Clintons. (Maybe a Ted Kennedy or Al Franken on occasion, but nothing gets a Republican’s shorts in a bunch quite like Bill and Hillary.) For the left, it is Ashcroft. Hands down. To get an idea for just how deep the hatred runs, flash back to Election Night 2000, when Ashcroft lost his senate bid in a close race with the late Mel Carnahan. Watching the returns come in at a party, outgoing President Clinton is said to have exclaimed in reference to Ashcroft, “Yes! That is an evil man!” Now, hold the phone here. Is he straight-laced? Sure – perhaps disturbingly so. Ashcroft is a devout Pentecostal who doesn’t drink, dance, play cards, or smoke (so presumably doesn’t appreciate Clinton’s more creative uses for cigars). Conservative? Absolutely. He’s off the charts, both socially and fiscally. But evil? Hitler was evil. Stalin? Check. But Ashcroft? He is more like Ned Flanders without the cheerful demeanor. It didn’t get any easier once George W. Bush tapped Ashcroft as his AG. A man of impeccable credentials (governor, attorney general, and a US senator for Missouri), Ashcroft still had to face the shrill “he’s-out-of-the-mainstream!” chorus of those hard line Democrats who really just didn’t like the fact that he is a conservative. Indeed, given the Democrat’s filibuster of judicial nominees, it would seem that liberals find anyone who believes in the sanctity of life or questions racial quotas to be inherently unfit for any appointed office (willfully ignoring the fact that the American people ELECT such people with great frequency). Next up in the Ashcroft saga was the earth- shattering revelation that he…prays! In early 2001, the big papers jumped all over the fact that Ashcroft has voluntary, closed-door prayer meetings in his office each day. A trivial tidbit on a slow news day to most, this gem bordered on scandalous for liberals. While the left is generally suspicious of government officials who are open about their faith, they can be downright hostile to those who dare to practice it (unless you’re Joe Lieberman, in which case it’s “courageous”). Suffice to say, the left’s paranoia really ran wild on this one. I guess they feared that if small group prayer went unchecked, an emboldened Ashcroft would quickly disperse his federal minions across the land as agents of Pentecostal conversion (“P- men?”). We can all be thankful that the ACLU was running point to stem this growing menace to the Establishment Clause. More recently, our AG has been demonized for the Patriot Act. This is curious, considering that he neither wrote the legislation nor signed it into law - it’s still somehow his doing. For liberals, Ashcroft is the Patriot Act personified: a rights-trampling zealot who has the power to go through grandma’s “unmentionable drawer” without probable cause. In fact, the hysteria surrounding the Patriot Act is mostly unfounded: Section 215, the portion that has librarians in Seattle all in a tizzy, has been used exactly zero times so far. Hardly the Orwellian nightmare we are lead to believe. And so it goes. Liberals continue to find creative, if completely illogical, ways of painting Ashcroft as the civil rights bogeyman. Recently, Senator John Kerry told a racially and ethnically diverse audience at a Democratic presidential debate that the crowd represented Ashcroft’s “worst nightmare.” Even the Philadelphia mayoral race has somehow managed to involve the AG. The campaign of incumbent Democrat John Street has hinted that the federal investigation in which he is currently embroiled was racially and politically motivated – with Ashcroft as the orchestrator. Where’s the proof behind any of the above? You don’t need it when you play the Ashcroft card. Regardless of whether George W gets another four years, it is a guarantee that the distortions and hysteria surrounding Ashcroft’s record will continue far down the road. The textbooks of 2050 may very well paint him as having been a greater threat to freedom than Osama bin Laden. It’s worth noting that, in the face of ongoing slander, Ashcroft has conducted himself with a level of dignity that seems to elude his most vocal critics… certainly a level of dignity that belies any claims of him being an “evil” man. ------------ About Matthew Bastian: Recovering socialst, part-time drummer, long-suffering Brewers fan, and all-around beach hound, Mr. Bastian lives in central New Jersey. Email Matthew Bastian: mbastian19@hotmail.com Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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