ASHCROFT OUT OF STEP RIGHT-WINGER'S PAST PROVES HE'S WRONG FOR OUR FUTURE.

Byline: Dianne Feinstein 

I truly believe that a president is entitled to his, or her, Cabinet. I am aware that virtually all of President Clinton's Cabinet was approved by voice vote, with one exception, which was a roll call vote, and that nominee was overwhelmingly approved.

However, the background record of this nominee is not mainstream on the key issues. I know he is strong and tough on law-and-order issues. However, his views on certain issues - civil rights and desegregation, a woman's right to choose and guns - make him an enormously divisive and polarizing figure.

This record can best be characterized as ultra-right wing. That is not where most of the people in this nation are.

Sen. John Ashcroft's commitment to enforce the law in view of the extremeness of his record, as well as, on occasion, the harshness of his rhetoric, makes it difficult to believe that he can, in fact, fairly and aggressively enforce laws he deeply believes are wrong.

When Sen. Ashcroft opposed Bill Lann Lee's nomination to head the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, he argued that Lee was ``an advocate who is willing to pursue an objective and to carry it with the kind of intensity that belongs to advocacy, but not with the kind of balance that belongs to administration . . . his pursuit of specific objectives that are important to him limit his capacity to have the balanced view of making the judgments that will be necessary for the person who runs (the Civil Rights) Division.''

If the senator's own standard is applied to this nomination, he would not be confirmed.

Last week, the Judiciary Committee held four days of hearings into the nomination of Ashcroft. During that time, we witnessed a man who had undergone a major transformation on many key issues of importance to the people of California and the nation. The question that each senator must now ask, is whether that transformation is plausible after more than 25 years of advocating the other side.

On a woman's right to choose, for example, the new John Ashcroft would have us believe that he fully accepts Roe vs. Wade as the law of the land, and he will do nothing to try to overturn it. He would fully fund task forces to protect women as they enter abortion clinics, and stated firmly that ``no woman should fear being threatened or coerced in seeking constitutionally protected health services.''

Contrast that with the John Ashcroft of the past 25 years, who has long argued that there is no constitutional right to abortion at all, that Roe vs. Wade was wrongly decided, and in 1998 wrote that ``If I had the opportunity to pass but a single law, I would . . . ban every abortion except those medically necessary to save the life of the mother.''

This John Ashcroft supported a constitutional amendment to ban virtually all abortions, even in the cases of rape and incest - an amendment that would also likely ban some of the most common forms of birth control, including the pill and the IUD.

The John Ashcroft of 25 years once stated, ``Battles (for the unborn) are being waged in courtrooms and state legislatures all over the country. We need every arm, every shoulder and every hand we can find. I urge you to enlist yourself in that fight.'' The new John Ashcroft claims to have laid down his arms entirely.

On gun control, the new John Ashcroft says he supports background checks at gun shows, says that he voted to deny the right to bear arms to domestic violence offenders, and says he would support re-authorizing the assault weapons ban when it expires in 2004, although he has called it ``wrong-headed.''

The old John Ashcroft, on the other hand, voted against mandatory background checks at gun shows, trigger locks on guns sold and a ban on large capacity ammunition magazines. He supported a concealed weapons law that would allow the people of Missouri to carry a concealed firearm into a grocery store, a church, or on school grounds or on a school bus, superseding the Federal Gun-Free Schools Act. He was, and still may be, an active member of the National Rifle Association.

On civil rights, the old John Ashcroft strenuously fought a desegregation plan in Missouri. In fact, the judge in the case stated that then-Missouri state Attorney General Ashcroft, ``as a matter of deliberate policy, decided to defy the authority of this court.''

The old John Ashcroft spoke at Bob Jones University, that to this day remains highly questionable for its religious and racial bias; at the hearing he demurred when Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Delaware, urged him to return the honorary degree and did not rule out returning to the college in the future.

And the old John Ashcroft, in stating his reasons for voting against James Hormel as ambassador for Luxembourg, stated that Hormel had ``actively supported the gay lifestyle,'' and that a person's sexual conduct is ``within what could be considered and what is eligible for consideration'' for ambassadorial nominees.

Yet the new John Ashcroft promises never to discriminate against gays or lesbians for employment and said the reason for voting against Ambassador Hormel was because he knew him personally. Hormel called to tell me that he not only does not know Ashcroft, but that the senator had refused to meet with him prior to his confirmation.

For over a quarter-century of public life, Ashcroft has established a record of right-wing conservatism, and of views far to the right of the average American, and even of many in his own party. Sen. Ashcroft has spent a career fighting against a woman's right to choose. He obstructed the nominations of several women and minority candidates to the federal bench.

Sen. Ashcroft said just two short years ago that: ``There are voices in the Republican Party today who preach pragmatism, who champion conciliation, who counsel compromise. I stand here today to reject those deceptions. If ever there was a time to unfurl the banner of unabashed conservatism, it is now.''

In 1997, Sen. Ashcroft remarked that: ``People's lives and fortunes (have) been relinquished to renegade judges - a robed, contemptuous intellectual elite.''

He continued that: ``Judicial despotism . . . stands like a behemoth over this great land.''

In a speech titled ``Courting Disaster: Judicial Despotism in the Age of Russell Clark,'' Ashcroft reveals deep and antagonistic feelings toward the courts of our country with this quote: ``Can it be said that the 'people govern?' Can it still be said that citizens control that which matters most? Or have people's lives and fortunes been relinquished to renegade judges - a robed contemptuous, intellectual elite that has turned the courts into 'nurseries of vice and the ban of liberty?' ''

And in the case of Missouri Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White's nomination to the federal bench, Ashcroft was responsible for a dark day in the Senate.

When a home-state senator objects to a nominee, it is very unlikely that the nomination will go forward. But instead of quietly objecting early on and allowing White to withdraw his nomination with dignity if he so wished, Ashcroft waited until the nominee reached the floor of the Senate - after waiting for two full years - to derail the nomination and humiliate the nominee by stating, ``We do not need judges with a tremendous bent toward criminal activity.''

Whatever Ashcroft's problem with White, there was no need to destroy White's reputation on the floor of the Senate, with no warning and no chance for Judge White to either defend himself or withdraw. This one act has become a stumbling block to my support, which I have not been able to get around. It says to me that it was done for political purposes.

Taken as a whole, Ashcroft's positions and statements, in my view, do not unite, but rather divide. They send strong signals to the dispossessed, the racial minorities of our country, and particularly to all women who have fought long and hard for reproductive freedom that this attorney general will not be supportive of laws for which they fought, no matter what he has said in the past weeks.

How can our citizens feel that this man will stand up for them when their civil rights are violated? How can the left out, the rape victim who needs an abortion, have faith that this man would enforce their rights?

In the end, every senator must live with his or her own vote, and for this senator, that vote will be no.

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Photo: Former Sen. John Ashcroft, a longtime foe of abortion and desegregation, speaks at a Senate hearing on his nomination as U.S. attorney general.

Dennis Cook/Associated Press