Wouldn’t it be handy if fundamentalist, unyielding, rock-ribbed conservative politicians behaved as threateningly as they believe? If they trembled and foamed at the mouth and bristled and roared, we could at least have fair warning of what might come next – namely, the mauling, if not slaughter, of justice.
The trouble is, too many of them appear as normal, even nice, folks. When they bare their teeth, it is to smile rather than to snarl. Their handshakes are firm and warm. They’ve got families like ours, drive cars like ours, favor the same kinds of movies and music we do, and some of their best friends are….
Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott is one such person. He’s pleasant in person. But his sunny personality belies his dark ideas. Same for outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft, whom I came to know as a congressional reporter when he was the junior senator from Missouri.
Though I got along just fine with him, Ashcroft routinely proposed or supported laws and regulations that turned my stomach. He kept it up at the Justice Department.
For the record, I also got along with the late Orval Faubus. You might recall that Faubus burrowed into history as the Arkansas governor who defied the Supreme Court order to desegregate public schools. Personally, the man could be charming. His political behavior, however, could hardly have been more hostile to us black Arkansans.
Hence, this reminder: Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing. Keep an eye out for them, because they are likely to pour out of the woods in the coming weeks.
One has already surfaced. Alberto Gonzales – the man George W. Bush has nominated as the man to replace Ashcroft as attorney general – presents himself as so unassuming, so soft-spoken, so safe, that it’s hard to take him as a threat.
But, Gonzales, 49, already has a significant record as a force to be reckoned with on civil rights and civil liberties and justice. Gonzales was an adviser to Bush during the Texas years, when Bush signed the death warrants of 150 men and women.
As White House legal counsel, Gonzales gave the president and the Defense Department the OK to flout the Geneva Conventions, which effectively cleared the way for the Abu Ghraib prison abuses in Iraq.
Gonzales’ office also drafted the president’s Supreme Court brief opposing affirmative action at the University of Michigan law school. He, too, would have been the one to green light the appointment of civil rights foe Charles Pickering to the federal bench.
Of course, Bush did not talk about those aspects of Gonzales’ career when he nominated him last week. That’s because if Bush understands nothing else, he knows to speak softly and conceal a big stick. The trick is to talk about “compassionate conservatism” while crushing the programs of compassion. It is to talk about “keeping America safe” while creating more and more enemies across the globe. Divert attention from reality by telling them what they want to hear, that’s the key.
Consequently, what we heard of Alberto Gonzales last week was the bootstraps story that gets Americans every time.
“My newest Cabinet nominee grew up in a two-bedroom house in Texas with his parents and seven siblings,” Bush said. “Al’s mother and dad, Pablo and Maria, were migrant workers who never finished elementary school, but they worked hard to educate their children and to instill the values of reverence and integrity and personal responsibility. These good people lived to see their son, Al, study at Rice University and Harvard Law School.”
For sure, it is a wonderful story. But if striving and staying and overcoming were the most essential attributes for being named the nation’s top law enforcement official, most blacks would be qualified. Those stories are a dime a dozen in our communities.
Make no mistake, it is not Gonzales’ humble beginnings or his modest demeanor that will exalt him to the place where so much of justice is delivered, denied or deferred. It’s not his sheep’s clothing; it’s the wolf in him that Bush wants. If Gonzales were as nice and fair as he seems on the surface, you’d never know his name.
