Cleanup Hitter

The good news from Washington this week is that former Pennsylvania Gov. Richard L. Thornburgh, a veteran prosecutor who combines political accomplishments with unquestioned integrity, has been nominated as the next attorney general. The bad news is that it took President Reagan so long to realize what kind of person should be in charge of the Justice Department.

If Thornburgh is confirmed quickly, as we think he should be, he will have less than six months to salvage a department that has been disgraced and demoralized by the extended legal problems of retiring Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III. There are limits to how much Thornburgh can accomplish before the end of Reagan’s term, though he was effective once before during just such a troubled transition. After six distinguished years as the U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, Thornburgh was named an assistant attorney general in 1975 and, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, set up a special public integrity section to prosecute cases of public corruption. He proved so valuable that when Jimmy Carter entered the White House in 1977, Thornburgh was asked to stay on as the No. 2 man in the Justice Department--a rare compliment for a Republican in a Democratic Administration.

Reagan, in nominating Thornburgh, called him “a tough-minded prosecutor” and praised him for restoring the death penalty and pushing mandatory jail sentences for violent criminals during his two terms as governor. It’s always interesting to see what litmus tests the Administration is using; ours would be different, and Thornburgh passes those, too.

Given the great discretion that a prosecutor has as to who should be charged with a crime, it’s moreimportant that an attorney general be fair-minded than tough-minded. As a U.S. attorney and later in the Justice Department, Thornburgh demonstrated his evenhandedness, indicting crooked politicians as well as mobsters, giving as much attention to obscure obscenity cases as to the organized-crime matters that grabbed the headlines. What is more, he seems to have worked without a political agenda; as governor, he vetoed a bill that would have severely restricted women’s rights to abortions because he considered it unconstitutional--a move that earned him the enmity of the right-to-life movement--and later only reluctantly signed a watered-down version that was, as he predicted it would be, invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court. We can’t help comparing his approach to that of Meese, an ideologue who campaigned in the courts for one lost cause after another.

The next six months could be busy. It will fall to Thornburgh, as attorney general, to direct the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility as it concludes its review of the massive record of Meese’s conduct compiled by the independent counsel; ultimately Thornburgh must decide whether his predecessor, though cleared of legal wrongdoing, should be censured for ethical infractions. As the new chairman of the interagency National Drug Policy Board, Thornburgh may be able to give focus and direction to the government’s chaotic, highly politicized anti-drug efforts. And, unlike Meese, who had to recuse himself because of conflicts, Thornburgh will be able to take charge of the ballooning investigation of Pentagon fraud. If he can do all this, Thornburgh will go a long way toward restoring the reputation of the Justice Department.