John Ashcroft Should Not Be Tarred With the Brush of Racism

In the 18th century, Samuel Johnson coined his famous aphorism that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Yet if Johnson were alive today to witness the hurly-burly of modern political discourse, he might very well say “the charge of racism is the last refuge of the American left.”

In 1991, liberal Democrats in the Senate put out a contract on the character of an African American Supreme Court nominee who dared to deviate from the liberal establishment’s canon of black political orthodoxy. Today, you see another Republican candidate, this time for the post of attorney general, being placed in the cross hairs of calumny and defamation. The same political forces that orchestrated the witch hunt against Clarence Thomas are now engaged in a campaign to undermine the integrity of former Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the stock-in-trade tactics of scorched-earth personal destruction are again being pulled from the liberal grab bag of political tricks.

Within the volley of accusations currently being hurled against Ashcroft by a variety of left-wing groups, the gravamen stems from the Senate confirmation battle over a judicial appointment for Missouri Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White. When President Clinton nominated White for a vacant seat on the federal bench, Ashcroft waged a campaign of opposition among his Senate colleagues that successfully scuttled this appointment.

Because White is African American, the rejection of his nomination triggered a tremendous hue and cry from all points along the liberal political continuum. President Clinton alluded to what he perceived as the true cause for the failure to confirm Judge White, averring that the vote “provides strong evidence for those who believe that the Senate treats minority and women judicial nominees unequally.”

Yet Clinton’s oblique accusation of GOP bigotry proved to be the soul of moderation by comparison with some of the other rhetoric that was flying fast and furious on this subject. The Black Leadership Forum, a coalition of mainstream civil rights organizations, in 1999 castigated Senate Republicans for committing an “affront to African Americans everywhere.” Left-wing congressional firebrand Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) plunged directly into ad hominem waters, charging in a press release that “I know a racist when I see one. Sen. Ashcroft acts like a racist, walks like a racist, talks like a racist.”

A closer examination of the facts, however, strongly indicates that the rejection of White’s judicial nomination stemmed from pedestrian ideological differences rather than incendiary racial bias. The crux of the controversy over White’s elevation to the federal bench turned on the question of his attitude on the judicial issue of crime and punishment. In 1991, the wife of Sheriff Kenny Jones was murdered in a shooting rampage committed by one James Johnson. Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death. Yet when the inevitable appeal reached the Missouri Supreme Court, Justice White cast the lone vote against the imposition of capital punishment.

When Clinton nominated White for a seat on the federal bench, Sheriff Jones began to lobby his law enforcement colleagues, circulating a petition urging the Senate to reject confirmation of the judge who voted against the death penalty for his wife’s killer.

Ashcroft, a strong law and order conservative, proved responsive to appeals from police agencies throughout Missouri that urged the Senate to reject the nomination of a judge perceived to be soft on crime. In this context, it should be pointed out that a substantial number of the police officers who expressed dismay about the prospect of White becoming a federal judge are black. If any passions were at work in the controversy over the White nomination, they stemmed from a crime victim’s simple desire for retribution and the instinctive preference of police for harsh punitive sanctions against lawbreakers.

The most instructive element of the Ronnie White affair, redux, stems from the affirmative action dynamic that pervades the attitude of Ashcroft’s assailants. The left appears dedicated to the proposition that minority nominees for public office should be immune from the same ideological inquiries that are the lot of other candidates. This knee-jerk tendency to cry racism for political gain not only serves to chill open discourse in the United States, it also perpetuates a patronizing bigotry that debilitates the very communities on whose behalf it is employed.