John Ashcroft, Political Liability

Via TalkLeft, this story from yesterday's Washington Post:

"New Harris Poll numbers released this week also show Ashcroft's overall popularity slipping below 50 percent for the first time this year, while the percentage of those who disapprove of his performance has climbed to nearly 40 percent.

....Ashcroft has drawn the left's ire for the reach of the government's war on terrorism; for overruling local prosecutors in death penalty cases; for altering the government's decades-old interpretation of the Second Amendment's right to bear arms; and for overseeing continued raids on facilities that provide marijuana for medical purposes. Now some conservatives, concerned that the war on terrorism has eroded civil liberties, are joining the criticism of Ashcroft's policies for the first time."

I've said before that Ashcroft is mounting this campaign because he's becoming a political liability for Bush. The Post says this:

"Yet it is still unclear whether bashing Ashcroft will be a political winner in 2004. As Ashcroft and his aides point out, most Americans and lawmakers supported the Patriot Act when it was approved in October 2001, and few voters mention it as a top concern when questioned by pollsters. [Gephardt, Kerry, Edwards and Lieberman all voted for the act.] Ashcroft and the White House point to a July 31 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll showing that 91 percent of registered voters said the act had not affected their civil liberties, while 56 percent said the law is good for the country. Moreover, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks appear to have changed U.S. attitudes over how much latitude the federal government needs and should be given to fight terrorism, pollsters from both parties said."

This misses a few key points, I think. The anti-Ashcroft campaign is working because people want to hang onto their own rights, not protect terrorists. Without being able to articulate it, I think, the public instinctively believes in the concepts of probable cause and due process. They mistrust how much Ashcroft is relying on fishing expeditions like the ill-fated Total Information Awareness program. Secondly, Howard Dean (and Wesley Clark, if he runs) both have the advantage of not being elected to federal office, so they're not on record as having supported PATRIOT like the others. This will actually drive Democratic base voters to Dean (and/or Clark) and make the anti-Ashcroft position more mainstream.

I volunteer to craft the Dean campaign messages about Ashcroft. It's so fun and easy.

Update: Howard Altman at the Philadelphia City Paper notes that he, and all other print reporters, were banned from interviewing Ashcroft when he gave his speech at the National Constitution Center:

"[The] Secret Service agent ... orders me escorted away from the scene. And this in the only museum dedicated to our national principles. In the city where an irascible weekly newspaper editor helped create a nation with his press. ... [M]ore than anything he said in his brief speech to hundreds of law-enforcement personnel[,] Ashcroft's print ban speaks volumes as he tries to get the country to swallow his load of bile. ...

I will probably never know if anyone at the Justice Department thinks it wrong to bar a journalist from talking to the AG at the National Constitution Center, because my requests for comment went unanswered. Which figures. The Patriot Act allows the feds to listen into calls. It doesn't say anything about returning them."

(Link via This Modern World.)

Comments

[denny]

yeah... just a matter of time before the backlash would start. americans are heavily indoctrinated but they are not brain dead.

i think the next year is going to be very interesting. i don't see george bush having the support he needs to get re-elected or re-selected but i also do not see him giving up power.

[Mithras]

I think Bush is still a strong contender to win in '04. The campaign really hasn't begun yet. Rove & Co. are sitting back and watching what themes are developing. Obviously, they have to play up the Democrats as "weak" and Bush as "strong." I see a lot of militaristic imagery being used. Capping it will be the convention in New York and the attempt to connect Bush's "strength" and the weakness people felt after 9/11. What the Democrats have to do is show Bush as incompetently leading us deeper into a swamp, not catching bin Laden, invading countries without cause and generally pissing off the world when what we need is more friends, not fewer.

[Gordon the Magnificent]

I can't think of any counties we have invaded without cause.