WASHINGTON (KRT) — For a time after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it seemed possible to forget the uncompromising conservative politics and sharp elbows that helped launch Attorney General John Ashcroft’s career.
More than most other Bush administration officials, Ashcroft has become the public face of the government’s war on terror, appearing often before television cameras to announce the latest arrest or to promote the newest anti-terror initiative. A year after the bruising confirmation hearings in which Senate liberals sought to cast him as a hard-right ideologue, his popularity has soared.
But two high-profile legal setbacks for the Department of Justice last week thrust Ashcroft’s social agenda back in the public spotlight.
The rulings struck down part of a federal law banning simulated child pornography and rejected his department’s challenge to an Oregon statute legalizing assisted suicide.
In the Oregon case, Ashcroft tried to use a decades-old narcotics law, initially intended to curb the market in illicit drugs, to hamper physicians who sought to help terminally ill patients take their own lives. In the virtual child pornography case, the Justice Department argued before the Supreme Court defending a 1996 law that made it illegal to use simulated images of children in pornographic films, or even to use adult actors who simply appeared underage.
The decisions served as a reminder that, despite the national near-consensus behind Ashcroft’s tactics against suspected terrorists, the nation’s underlying divisions on social policies remain as deep as ever.
“He is riding the crest of a wave of popularity … fighting the war on terror,” said Richard Semiatin, assistant professor of government at American University. But, Semiatin added, “that doesn’t mean that the (conservative) policies that are personally important to him, that go under the radar screen,” are any less controversial with some members of the public.
Ashcroft had little visibility on law enforcement issues before Sept. 11.
His signature issues were abortion, support for gun-owner rights, efforts to reduce funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, and limits on welfare payments.
An evangelical Christian and former touring gospel singer, Ashcroft early in his term as attorney general organized daily prayer sessions for his staff.
In the Senate, Ashcroft was often on the margins, even during the years after the 1994 elections when GOP conservatives dominated, because he insisted on pushing deeply conservative issues that did not have broad public support. That tactic galvanized opponents on the left. Pragmatic conservatives like Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., viewed those initiatives as quixotic quests that were more trouble than they were worth.
His credentials as a social conservative were held in such high esteem by party conservatives that he ran a credible campaign for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, although he was never able to broaden his appeal beyond that base and dropped out of the race early on.
His hard-nosed tactics have caused him “some trouble. … He can be rather combative and take a very hard line and he has made some enemies,” said Mark Rozell, a professor of politics at Catholic University.
Despite those problems, Ashcroft’s career at Justice has taken off. He enjoys considerable support at the White House, in part because his public approval ratings are so high. There is some talk that he might replace Vice President Cheney as President Bush’s running mate in 2004 if Cheney’s health problems keep him from running.
“In a way, the tragedy of 9/11 has propelled Ashcroft into a position of greater power and leverage than one ever would have suspected; he has really cast himself as the guardian of the homeland,” said Alan Lichtmann, a history professor at American University.
Yet the court cases that the department lost last week may provide more of a window on Ashcroft than his war on terror.
In the Oregon case, U.S. District Judge Robert Jones rejected a Justice Department attempt to ban doctors from administering drugs used in assisted suicide. Jones issued a scorching commentary, sharply criticizing Ashcroft for overstepping his authority in trying to thwart the law by issuing a directive warning doctors not to participate or risk losing their licenses to prescribe federally controlled substances. Jones noted that the voters had twice approved the law.
The Justice Department has called the Oregon law inhumane and has said that doctors should not assist in “killing” the terminally ill.
Susan Bloch, professor of constitutional law at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that the department had taken a legally aggressive approach by using the Controlled Substances Act to attack the statute. The act was written to fight drug traffic, she said, and its use in the assisted suicide issue is questionable. That is particularly so, she said, because the Bush administration has regularly voiced support for giving states more leeway.
“Here is Oregon doing an experiment on a difficult issue of law and the federal government is coming in and saying “You can’t,’” Bloch said. “That is fairly aggressive.”