THE ASHCROFT BRAND OF AMERICAN JUSTICE

WASHINGTON -- A friend of mine, a liberal editor at a magazine, has been
trying to get some of his staffers interested in writing about whether the
Bush team's anti-terrorism measures are scorching our civil liberties.

It's the sort of topic they'd usually jump at. But not this time.

"As good liberals, we feel we ought to be upset but somehow we're not," my
friend mused. "But why not? In part because we were really attacked this
time. Before, when the president talked about national security, it was in
the abstract. Now, you say, 'Oh, this is national security.'

"We're all in this haze of indifference. I don't want to get into it enough
to have to make a decision about how bad it is. What if I reached the
conclusion that this is all terrible? Would I have to start protesting in
the streets? I'm not in the mood for a big civil libertarian crisis."

With supreme ambivalence, we are embarking on the Ashcroft era in American
justice. The Economist writes that the attorney general's assault on evil
has "a Cromwellian feel," noting dryly: "England's Lord Protector also
disapproved of drinking, dancing and smoking."

The evangelical barbershop singer, whose nomination was opposed by every
liberal special interest, has now become the big man in town.

It's weird what tricks fate plays. The great hope of the Christian right
who was toppled by a dead man and his widow in a Senate race has re-emerged
as a colossus bestriding the country.

A true sectarian in religion and politics, who said at Bob Jones University
that in America "we have no king but Jesus," will leave a huge mark on the
way Americans live their lives.

Ashcroft's contentious nomination fight was not over whether he had a fine
legal mind. Senators fought over whether or not he was too riddled by
prejudice and narrowness to serve, as they examined his opposition to a
black judicial nominee, a gay ambassadorial nominee, abortion rights and
his odd defense of slave owners and Confederate generals.

Now, stunned by terrorists, abroad and in our midst, the country is seized
by contradictory impulses.

On the one hand, we have to trust Ashcroft. Four thousand people are dead.
We are at war with anthrax. There is no question that the attorney general
inherited a Justice Department and an FBI that were grossly delinquent on
domestic security. The terrorists had been planning the encore attack in
New York for at least two years. The FBI has revealed that all 19 hijackers
came in legally, and only three of their visas had expired. How does that
happen?

But even as we cut the guy some slack, we have to be really skeptical about
his assertions of power. It was telling that the first resistance to his
edict to interview 5,000 Middle Eastern men came from police chiefs
objecting to racial profiling. We're trying to trust someone whose
instincts once did not inspire universal trust to rethink the way civil
liberties will be treated for a generation.

In the middle of our terrorism war, Ashcroft did, after all, find time to
meddle with the right of the terminally ill in Oregon to take advantage of
the state's assisted suicide law.

The AG started his job in a polarized capital. A Newsweek cover declared
that his ascent had started a new Holy War here, a culture clash between
liberals and conservatives.

Before they were startled by a real demon, left-wing groups had planned to
demonize Ashcroft as the Teddy and Hillary of the right, a fund-raising
hot-button character.

But now Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union,
is careful to say she does not think the president and attorney general are
infringing on civil liberties in a "cynical, 'we'll take advantage of this
to multiply our powers"' sort of way. But, she says, we still must be on
guard when the Bushies simply ask us to trust them.

"People are very concerned, at least in the abstract," she said. "They say
they are willing to give up their freedoms for national security if they
are getting something in return. But they are not sure they are getting
something in return."

Since Sept. 11, the attorney general has discovered that liberals are not a
monolith, that one can believe in the ACLU and national security, that one
can want privacy protected and still be a patriot.

If we have to complicate our view of John Ashcroft, then John Ashcroft has
to complicate his view of us.