OK, I'm really about to let go of this Ashcroft-Senate-News Hour thing, except to add one last comment. On the PBS News Hour's "Political Wrap" discussion of the controversy about whether Ashcroft's denunciations of his critics went too far, Mark Shields's current conservative foil (David Brooks of the Weekly Standard) had this to say:
There's something that conservatives understand-- it's hard for a lot of other people to understand. You come to Washington as a conservative, you feel a little alienated. You come as a Christian conservative, you feel moreso because somehow you feel your values are under assault every day. And what happens is you only deal with your intimates, you only deal with conservatives, and you feel like the whole town is out to get you. And so you get this phenomenon... of developing this psychology that every thing I do that liberals like is somehow a failure of my character.
I have nothing against conservatives (sometimes I even suspect that I might actually be one) but pardon me for not feeling especially sorry for the Attorney General of the United States of America. This touchy-feely psychological profile of what is now revealed as the government's victim in chief isn't any kind of excuse. If it were true that Ashcroft's traumatic experiences as a member of an oppressed minority trying to survive in a hostile world rendered him incapable of cooperation with anyone but his "intimates," then he really would be unfit for his office. (And, to play the Weekly Standard's own game of turning the rhetorical tables, just re-read that quotation substituting the word "women" for "conservatives," "feminist" for "Christian," and "men" for "liberals" and imagine what kind of piece they would write about it.)
Brooks seems like a decent guy, and he did say that the statement and attitude, if not the position, were "regrettable." But why can't Ashcroft, his spokesmen, and his few remaining defenders simply admit that he was wrong? "Reverse identity politics" is neither here nor there and in fact gets us precisely nowhere.
Posted by Dr. Frank at December 8, 2001 10:53 AM | TrackBack