Watching Ted Kennedy and Pat Leahy tear out John Ashcroft's entrails during his confirmation hearings this week -- he'll survive, damaged -- conservatives are getting desperate. And you can see it in their prose.
Covering the second day of the Ashcroft hearings for the National Review Online -- in a piece entitled "Playing the Race Card: The Democrat strategy to label Ashcroft a racist" -- Byron York quotes from an exchange between Ashcroft and Senator Joe Biden:
"I want you to understand why people are suspect [sic]," Delaware senator Joeseph Biden said as he grilled Ashcroft about an interview Ashcroft gave to Southern Partisan magazine. "Your ideology blinds you to an equal application of, not just the law, but the facts."
Now, if Biden had actually said that -- which might have amounted to at least implying Ashcroft is a racist -- York's article title and whole angle would have had some merit. But now look at how the Boston Globe's Susan Milligan reports the same exchange:
Ashcroft said Americans should "respect" Confederate Southern general Robert E. Lee.
But "discrimination is wrong. Slavery was abhorrent," Ashcroft said.
Biden sighed deeply. "People are suspect not because they believe you are a racist. I don't believe that," he said. "They are suspect because they believe your ideology blinds you to an equal application not just of the law, but of the facts."
Okay. Possibly Byron York is just terrible at taking notes, or can't read his own handwriting (which is itself inexcusable in a "White House correspondent," as he's by-lined). But comparing the two passages, it certainly seems like he's stretching to make Biden look bad, down to the [sic] and the awkward comma placement. And at least if you put more stock in the Globe's reporting -- remember, liberal editorial page notwithstanding, this is the paper that broke the "Doggygate" story that nipped at Al Gore's heels -- York has quoted Biden out of context, thereby egregiously misrepresenting what he said at a crucial point in the Ashcroft hearings.
Granted, maybe this wasn't a willful screw-up. Maybe exactly the same thing that Biden claimed many liberals fear about Ashcroft is going on here: York's ideology is blinding him to the facts.
Whatever the case, Byron York deserves some sympathy, if not pity. Because it's becoming increasingly clear -- at least to disgruntled righty journalists -- that John Ashcroft needs all the help he can get right now (including journalistic misquotations of, and slanders and slurs lobbed at, the Democratic senators cross-examining Ashcroft). More specifically: Ashcroft needs help because he hasn't been getting it from George W. Bush.
During the Ashcroft hearings -- as both senior Senate Democrats and liberal interest groups increasingly showed their mettle -- rightist commentators started to complain about softball tactics on the part of the incoming administration. First, moaned these pundits, the Bush team left Linda Chavez to be eaten alive by lefty activists, thereby passing up an ideal chance to appoint a secretary of labor who would have really burned the AFL-CIO. And now, they say, their defense of Ashcroft has been, at best, inept. According to a press report, Bush muzzled Ashcroft up until the hearings, instructing him to sit tight -- while he was painted as a racist, a theocrat, or worse -- and save his defense for the Judiciary Committee. But in the meantime, no one took up his case.
One problem, it seems, is George W. himself. Conservatives seem surprised that their barely articulate, touchy-feely president-elect can't make a resounding public defense of his nominees, but instead seems restricted to talking about how they have "good hearts." Getting fed up with Bush's dreary cardiac attests, The Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes questions the strategy he terms "Bush Nice" in his latest column. Faced with criticism for his nominations of Ashcroft, Gail Norton, and Linda Chavez, Barnes observes that "Bush often sounded detached . . . more like a commentator than a player." Perhaps somebody should confiscate the Nintendo 64? Or place a call to Jim Baker?
Some even go so far as to suggest that the incoming Bush administration is fundamentally incompetent, and couldn't defend its nominees even if it wanted to. The conservative Scripps Howard columnist Deroy Murdock, for example, complained in the National Review Online that the communications operation of the Bush team was in a shambles:
In preparation for an earlier column and subsequent radio interviews on Ashcroft, I called the transition press office and left no fewer than five messages seeking a fact sheet on Ashcroft's record on black political appointments. Nothing was faxed to me over a ten-day period. My sixth call was the first to be returned, a week and a half after my first query. Though a senior press aide yesterday promised me an Ashcroft fact sheet and background on Bush's education priorities, nothing has arrived so far.
But, Murdock continues, the press team of PFAW responded to his queries right away. This, he concludes, is no way to fight an ideological war.
In fact, even non-ideologues are feeling sorry for Bush's cabinet appointments. Writing in Slate, William Saletan argues that "Ashcroft and Norton deserve better advocacy." The predicament, Saletan seems to think, is pretty dire: "Republicans have learned the hard way that control of Congress isn't enough. Without a coherent, authoritative voice, they can't beat the Democrats. For six years, they've waited for that voice. They're still waiting."
But perhaps the best words on Bush's burbling wimpiness came from conservative columnist Tony Snow: "Washington isn't Austin. It's the dark side of Oz, and nobody takes orders from anybody perceived as a Cowardly Lion." Snow is off by just two letters. Bush isn't the Cowardly Lion -- he's the cowardly scion of a former president, uncertain of his footing mainly because, whether or not he comes from good political stock, he doesn't have the experience to run a country.
Bring on the flying monkeys.
