January 31, 2001

Mr. President, I am going to vote to confirm John Ashcroft as U.S. Attorney General. I would like to take a few minutes of the Senate's time to explain my reasons.

Let me say at the outset that I hope Mr. Ashcroft will listen to what I have to say here this afternoon. My comments are delivered primarily for the benefit of my colleagues and my constituents. But they are also directed to John Ashcroft .

It is important that John Ashcroft understand that my support of his nomination is not unqualified. It is given, rather, only upon extensive reflection and despite concerns about what kind of Attorney General he will make.

I have listened attentively to the comments of our colleagues both in support of and in opposition to this nomination. I respect immensely their views. I have considered the practices and precedents of the Senate in deferring to presidential cabinet appointments. And I have reflected upon my own practices over the past two decades in the Senate in considering such appointments. During that time, I have supported an overwhelming number of Cabinet nominees. But I have, on the rarest occasions, opposed Cabinet nominees supported by the majority of members of the Senate and by a majority of my own party. It also bears mentioning that I have supported nominees opposed by most members of my party and, in one instance, also opposed by a majority of the Senate.

My concerns about this particular nominee can be reduced to three in particular:

First, whether he will uphold and vigorously enforce our laws--especially those with which he personally disagrees.

Second, whether he will treat other people in public life as he wishes to be treated--particularly those with whom he may disagree.

And third, whether he will seek to unify rather than divide our nation on critical issues facing our nation, especially the issue of racial justice.

Let me address these concerns in order.

First, as to John Ashcroft's disposition to enforce the law. The Attorney General, as we all know, is our nation's primary law enforcement officer. This is an office of unique importance. Except perhaps for the president himself, no other individual can or should do more to protect the public's safety, and to promote the ideal of equal justice that is the North Star in our constellation of laws.

Like many others in public life, John Ashcroft is a man of strong convictions. He should be commended, not faulted, for that fact. But the question that arises with respect to his nomination for this particular office is whether those convictions--on matters such as a woman's right to choose and gun safety--might well preclude him from enforcing laws on those and similar issues with which he may disagree.

This is a threshold question. If the nation's top law enforcement officer cannot enforce the law, how can anyone say he should nevertheless assume the office? If the public cannot know with reasonable assurance that their Attorney General will uphold our laws vigorously and free of personal bias, then how can we be confident that respect for the law will not be weakened?

If minority Americans, women, and others cannot rely on the Attorney General to safeguard their liberties, how can other - indeed, all - Americans not worry that their rights might one day be placed at risk, as well?

John Ashcroft has minced no words about his positions on issues like a woman's right to choose and gun safety. He has advocated positions contrary to current law. That is his record. It is also, I might add, his right--just as any of us has the right to advocate legal change.

But that is far from saying that he cannot faithfully enforce the law. There is more to his record that deserves consideration. This is a man who was elected not once, but five times by a majority of the people of his state - as their attorney general, governor, and Senator. He has devoted nearly three decades of his life to public service. He has, as far as anyone knows, upheld the public's trust throughout that time.

If his nomination were to be decided on the basis of experience alone, he would have been among the first, rather than the last, of the President's Cabinet nominees to be considered by the Senate.

As Attorney General and Governor, the record suggests that he did, in fact, uphold and advocate laws with which he disagreed. He endorsed Democratic proposals to fund new roads and schools. He signed legislation to increase the penalties for crimes motivated by bigotry. He supported additional resources for legal services for the indigent.

During his confirmation hearing, he swore under oath that he would uphold the law ``so help me God.'' He did so repeatedly and fervently. He swore that he would respect Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey as the law of the land. He swore to uphold the federal law that prevents violence and intimidation at family planning clinics. He testified that the Brady law and the assault weapons ban are constitutional.

He also testified that mandatory trigger locks, gun licensing and gun registration are all constitutional. And he vowed to hire without regard to sexual preference (although he did not, I should add, pledge to continue Attorney General Reno's policy of excluding sexual preference from security clearance decisions).

I do not expect that John Ashcroft will change his views as Attorney General. But I do have every right to expect, based upon his commitment to God Almighty before the Judiciary Committee, that he will keep his word to uphold the laws of the land, even those with which he profoundly disagrees.

Mr. President, I would love to have the complete and total assurance he would do that. But I cannot honestly conclude that he would not. Thus, it compels me to give him the benefit of the doubt because he has taken that oath fervently, before God Almighty, and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A second concern I have about Senator Ashcroft's nomination is how he has treated other people. I refer very specifically to his conduct toward Judge Ronnie White, Ambassador James Hormel, and Bill Lann Lee, former head of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division.

Other colleagues have spoken and will speak about these cases in greater detail. Suffice it to say his treatment of their nominations went beyond the bounds of good manners and common decency. Too often, John Ashcroft refused to meet with these people. He failed to give them an opportunity to respond to the allegations. And he distorted, in my view, their records.

In the case of Mr. Hormel, he deemed the wholly private matter of sexual orientation to be a factor ``eligible for consideration'' in whether he ought to be nominated.

In the case of Judge White, he actively worked for his defeat - without first giving him a chance to respond to misleading statements made against him on the Senate floor.

His treatment of these men was cavalier at best - callous and calculated at worst. It is particularly troubling because my own limited experience with Senator Ashcroft was of a quite different nature.

We worked together on only one issue that I recall - ending the embargo on food and medicine to the people of Cuba. In that effort, he took a position that engendered considerable opposition in his own caucus. At all times, I found him reasonable and trustworthy.

But there is nevertheless a record here of going after people in a harsh and unfair manner. I have always been suspicious of people who try to build a political career in part on the bones of their personal adversaries. Attacking motives, using people as political scapegoats, acting with reckless disregard for the reputations of others - these are the kinds of actions that I find contemptible, and that unfortunately have become all too common in public life today.

I hope John Ashcroft will change and turn away from such behavior in the future. I believe that he can. As the saying goes, ``There is no sinner without a future, and no saint without a past.'' I believe John Ashcroft is a decent human being, and I take him at his word.

If his flaws loom large, it is at least in part because they have been aired and examined in the magnifying light of public life.

And while I will not excuse these flaws - particularly in his treatment of others as a public official - I will not engage in the same form of pay-back politics that seems to have a growing currency in our time. That is not to suggest that those who oppose him will have engaged in such tactics. On the contrary, I can well understand the principled basis of their opposition.

That said, I will not do to John Ashcroft what has been done to too many people in recent years - including people like Ronnie White, James Hormel, and Bill Lann Lee. These individuals did not deserve the treatment they received. No one does. Not even John Ashcroft .

My third and final concern is closely related to the first: whether his views on the critical domestic issues of our day would preclude him from using his office not just to uphold the law, but to uphold the spirit of freedom and equal justice that permeates every one of our laws.

I find it not a little ironic that our new President, who calls himself a ``uniter, not a divider'', nominated for Attorney General a man who throughout his career has plunged so divisively into the most divisive issues of our time: civil rights, women's rights, equal rights, gun safety.

On a different level, I am not in the least surprised. The President chose a nominee who reflects his own views on many of these same issues. I did not expect him to nominate a Democrat.

Like nearly all of our colleagues, I have time and again supported Cabinet and other nominees with whom I disagreed on critical issues.

Like them, I have a high degree of tolerance for differences of opinions when such nominations come before us - including on such issues as choice and guns. Indeed, I supported the nomination of Governor Thompson as Secretary of Health and Human Services, despite our strong differences on issues related to a woman's right to choose.

However, there are certain differences that, I would argue, none of us should tolerate. And in that respect, the issue in John Ashcroft's public record that concerns me the most is the issue of race.

If I thought John Ashcroft was a racist, I would oppose him as strongly as I possibly could on any other issue I have ever faced in my 25 years of public service. I would urge each of our colleagues to do the same. We must not tolerate intolerance. But I do not believe that such a potent word applies to John Ashcroft. And it is lamentable, to say the least, that some outside of the Senate have used it to describe him.

We of all people here in the Senate appreciate that words have meaning. So when someone uses a word such as ``racist'' to describe actions that, however objectionable, are not racist, then they reduce the impact of that word at those moments when it is most applicable.

While by no means a path-breaker, as governor, John Ashcroft appointed more African-American jurists to the bench than any of his predecessors. He appointed a number of women, as well. His wife has taught at Howard University, a predominantly black institution. People of color testified in support of his nomination. Even Judge Ronnie White - about whom I will say more in a moment - said that he does not believe Senator Ashcroft's opposition to his nomination was racist in nature.

In the Senate, he held a hearing on and condemned the practice of racial profiling. He supported twenty-six judicial nominees of African-American descent. And it should not go unmentioned that at least one member of his Senate staff - a devout Jew - has written that he found Senator Ashcroft not only tolerant, but supportive of his religious beliefs and the practical demands that those beliefs placed upon his time.

Nevertheless, I am deeply troubled by many of his actions in this area. Most notably, he vehemently and persistently opposed efforts to integrate the St. Louis public schools. In fact, his actions were so vexatious that he was nearly cited for contempt for failing to comply with court orders to submit a plan to desegregate the schools of that fine city. He walked up to the line of disobeying the law - even appearing to boast of that fact when he ran for Governor for the first time. Those actions trouble me deeply.

The record suggests that in times past John Ashcroft has submitted to the temptation to divide Americans along racial lines.

The same record also suggests that he is someone without personal bias on matters of race, who has tried to heal rather than deepen our nation's ancient racial wounds. I hope that it is John Ashcroft who, if confirmed, will lead the Department of Justice. Our nation has traveled too far - and we have too far still to go - to relent for even a moment in the struggle for equal justice.

I realize that my vote for John Ashcroft may not be decisive. But I hope that it will be informative--informative most of all to John Ashcroft. Listen well, John Ashcroft. There are those of us here today who could easily vote against your confirmation, but have decided to give you a second chance - an opportunity that you would have denied to Ronnie White, Bill Lann Lee, James Hormel, and others.

I hope this vote will not be in vain. I hope that John Ashcroft will uphold his pledge to enforce the laws of our land. I fervently hope that he will work to unite rather than divide our nation. And I hope, for the sake of our nation and this institution, that this vote will in some small measure help bring about an end to the growing predilection to treat nominations as ideological battlefields.

I yield the floor.