OUT OF SIGHT

BOSTON -- The district attorney of Kings County (Brooklyn), N.Y., Charles
J. Hynes, has for 10 years run a program that diverts nonviolent drug
offenders from prison to treatment: a tough residential regimen of up to
two years. It has been a great success. Those who complete the program get
into renewed trouble with the law at half the rate of other drug offenders.

Congress came close last month to authorizing federal grants for drug
treatment alternatives on that model. A bill sponsored by two Republicans,
Orrin Hatch and Strom Thurmond, and a Democrat, Charles E. Schumer, passed
the Senate; another passed the House with the support of such conservatives
as Bob Barr of Georgia. But the two versions were not reconciled before
Congress adjourned.

Given that support for drug treatment alternatives, District Attorney Hynes
was troubled when he learned that John Ashcroft, George W. Bush's choice
for attorney general, had spoken against the idea. Senator Ashcroft told a
conservative think tank in 1997:

"A government which takes the resources that we would devote toward the
interdiction of drugs and converts them to treatment resources, and instead
of saying 'Just say no' says 'Just say maybe' or 'Just don't inhale' . . .
is a government that accommodates us at our lowest and least."

Senator Ashcroft thus scorned a policy that has the support of men as
conservative as Strom Thurmond and Bob Barr. His position, on this as on so
many issues, was out of sight on the far right of our politics.

How would he as attorney general carry out a law, if Congress now passes
it, to aid drug treatment alternatives as more effective and more
economical than prison? District Attorney Hynes told me, "I would hope he
would rethink his position."

The same question arises on other issues. How would he enforce the law
against disruption of clinics that provide abortion, when he has said that
more than anything else he would like to forbid all abortions except to
save the mother's life? How committed would he be to the civil rights laws,
given his acceptance of an honorary degree from Bob Jones University and
his statement that it was wrong to describe the Confederate cause -- the
preservation of slavery -- as "perverted"?

Senator Ashcroft was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's
subcommittee on constitutional rights. He held hearings not on
discrimination or freedom of speech or the like. His subjects included the
right to gun ownership, punishment for burning the flag and reversing the
Miranda decision.

The Senate should be a place of diverse opinions, no matter how extreme.
But the role of the attorney general is different. That is the point of the
controversy about the choice of John Ashcroft. The question is whether the
country can have confidence in someone so extreme to enforce the law
impartially and with respect for our legal tradition.

If he were not a former senator, the idea of a person with Mr. Ashcroft's
views being attorney general would be regarded as grotesque. He would have
no chance to be confirmed by the Senate. But because he was a member of the
club, everyone is predicting his confirmation.

The Christian right, which made the attorney general's job its number one
demand, is all-out in its support. No one can expect detached appraisals
from Republican senators. Senator Arlen Specter, a so-called moderate,
wrote an Op-Ed piece for The New York Times calling for moderates in the
cabinet -- and hastened to add that Senator Ashcroft was "an excellent
nominee."

As for Democratic senators, not one has had the courage so far to say that
he will oppose the Ashcroft nomination. If Al Gore had been elected and had
chosen someone far out on the left for the job, would conservative senators
have been so deferential? Not bloody likely.

The political turmoil of recent years has often swirled around the attorney
general. We need a reassuring figure, one who can bring us back to
confidence in the law. George W. Bush's failure to understand that is the
worst aspect of this episode.

After the turmoil of Watergate, President Gerald Ford made a non- political
choice: Edward Levi, president of the University of Chicago, who restored
the Justice Department's luster. Writing about President Ford during the
Republican Convention last August, I asked whether George W. Bush, in
choosing an attorney general, would follow Gerald Ford and put politics
second to respect for law. We know the answer now.