John Ashcroft's Power Grab

The saga of a troubled -- and troubling -- attorney general.

Brian Doherty from the June 2002 issue

(Page 5 of 5)

Having stated that, he has shown it in only two rather restrained ways. First, he reduced the time that records of gun background checks are kept from 90 days to one. Second, he extended one procedural courtesy to those mysterious, anonymous, locked-away aliens: He refused to check whether they had made gun purchases, agreeing with FBI lawyers that such an investigation went beyond the statutory purpose of the Brady Bill. As Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Center says regarding Ashcroft's rhetoric on Second Amendment rights, "It doesn't clarify any federal policy and it doesn't give guidance to the ATF or FBI. It ends up being a political sop to a very powerful political interest."

So his pro-gun statements, as revolutionary as they may seem on the surface, merely maintain the status quo. His admirers are reinforced in their admiration, his enemies are reassured he is everything they hate him for, and the law basically stays the same.

For all his flaws and foibles, Attorney General Ashcroft has his hand on the control stick of the Department of Justice. He is a man whose upbringing and beliefs place him at odds with the dominant cultural elite, who dog and question his every move and decision. He's a man who has occupied many offices with little to show for it all except one huge, unique humiliation -- after which he has been thrust into a position of great legal power in a time when the country is uniquely ready to roll over to authority. Given his Assemblies of God background and its concomitant sense of the divine in the mundane, it's impossible to think that (though he'd never admit it to a secular press) Ashcroft isn't feeling that it's part of God's providence that he's attorney general during a time of national crisis and panic. That it's an occasion that Ashcroft, the stern and firm father figure, should rise to.

Which may well be reason to worry. Constitutionalists view the attorney general's job as representing the people of the United States and their Constitution. Ashcroft seems to think differently. His policies to date show it, and so do some telling words. When asked to defend one of his actions as Missouri's attorney general during his confirmation hearing, he noted, "When the state is attacked, I think it's important to expect the attorney general -- .to defend the state." This has been the alarming philosophy behind almost all of his post-9/11 decisions and pronouncements. His power as attorney general may well be, to him, as reckless and out of control as that Piper Cub he remembers so strongly from his childhood.

But this time, we're all stuck with him in the pilot's seat.