ASHCROFT: NOT JUST WHISTLING DIXIE

More than 13 decades after Robert E. Lee surrendered at  Appomattox, the U.S. Senate is getting ready to confirm as attorney general  someone who has voiced fervent admiration for the Confederacy. It's an  almost unbelievable situation. Yet many news outlets -- and the vast  majority of senators -- are perpetuating a state of denial.

John Ashcroft, defeated for re-election to the Senate last  November, is the incoming president's most controversial Cabinet pick.  Arguments are raging about Ashcroft's hardline positions against civil  rights, affirmative action, school desegregation, women's rights, abortion,  gay rights and protection of civil liberties. Media attention has focused  on the extraordinary actions that he took in 1999 to block the appointment  of African-American judge Ronnie White to the federal bench by smearing him  as "pro-criminal."

If he becomes attorney general, Ashcroft will be the nation's  chief law enforcement officer. He'll have enormous power while running the  Justice Department and making weighty recommendations to the president on  judicial appointments. For good measure, Ashcroft will oversee such  agencies as the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Immigration  and Naturalization Service and federal prisons.

Less than two years ago, in an extensive interview with Southern  Partisan magazine, Ashcroft was emphatic about his admiration for Jefferson  Davis and other Confederate leaders. At the time, the senator was  considering a run for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, a quest  that would have involved cultivating support among white voters in GOP  primaries in the South.

During the 1998 interview, Ashcroft praised Southern Partisan as a  magazine that "helps set the record straight." He added: "You've got a  heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like Lee,  [Stonewall] Jackson and Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do  more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be  taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred  fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

Should the attorney general of the United States be someone who  doubts that the preservation of slavery was a "perverted agenda"?

That's not the only key question that arises from reading the  Ashcroft interview in Southern Partisan (three pages of text ending with  his warm farewell, "I'll be seeing you!"). It's crucial to understand the  magazine that Ashcroft went out of his way to laud. A year ago, in its Jan.  31 issue, The New Republic reported that Southern Partisan "serves as the  leading journal of the neo-Confederacy movement" -- and, for two decades,  has been publishing "a gumbo of racist apologias."

For instance, in 1996, Southern Partisan asserted that slave  owners "encouraged strong slave families to further the slaves' peace and  happiness." In 1990, the magazine touted former KKK leader David Duke as "a  Populist spokesperson for a recapturing of the American ideal."

Gradually, since George W. Bush announced his choice for attorney  general on Dec. 22, information about Ashcroft's interview with Southern  Partisan has begun to reach the public. Some news accounts have quoted his  favorable words about Davis and other top Confederates. But few journalists  have gone deeply into the story.

Some Ashcroft backers have strained to pooh-pooh the Southern  Partisan interview. In a Dec. 31 editorial, the Detroit News scoffed at any  suggestion that Ashcroft's comments "call into question his commitment to  civil rights and may be grounds for a challenge to his appointment." The  newspaper declared: "That's a nonsensical smoke screen. The views Sen.  Ashcroft shared several years ago with Southern Partisan magazine reflect a  curious American reality -- the ability to reconcile admiration for the  courage, nobility and commitment of the rebels with an objection to their  cause."

In fact, Ashcroft derided the idea that pro-slavery leaders had a  blameworthy agenda, and he did not express any "objection to their cause."  The Detroit News editorial was misleading in another important respect:  Like so much other media coverage, it did not scrutinize -- or even mention  -- Ashcroft's sweeping endorsement of Southern Partisan as a magazine that  "helps set the record straight."

Avoidance of Ashcroft's overall record has been typical of  editorials by newspapers supporting him for attorney general, including the  Boston Herald, the Atlanta Journal and the Chicago Tribune. But at least as  many daily papers -- notably the New York Times, the San Francisco  Chronicle and the Star Tribune in Minneapolis -- have editorialized against  the Ashcroft nomination. And quite a few other dailies (such as the Atlanta  Constitution, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and St. Petersburg Times)  have expressed editorial misgivings.

Perhaps most telling has been the response from the most prominent  newspaper in the prospective attorney general's home state of Missouri, the  St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- which swiftly urged the Senate to "investigate  Mr. Ashcroft's opposition to civil rights, women's rights, abortion rights  and to judicial nominees with whom he disagrees." The Post-Dispatch  recalled that "Mr. Ashcroft has built a career out of opposing school  desegregation in St. Louis and opposing African-Americans for public office."

It's no surprise that Bob Jones University, notorious for bigotry,  gave Ashcroft an honorary degree in 1999. Accepting the award in person, he  was proud to deliver the university's commencement address.

While the country's editorial writers and columnists are deeply  divided over whether Ashcroft should become attorney general, there is much  less division in evidence on Capitol Hill. Republicans, of course, are  marching to Bush's drum. Meanwhile, the Senate's 50 Democrats have been  mealy-mouthed at best.

Democratic politicians are fond of preening themselves as  champions of civil rights. But now, at a pivotal moment in history -- while  some complain that Ashcroft's ideology makes them uncomfortable and promise  that the nominee will face tough questions -- the bottom line is that  Democrats in the Senate seem very willing to cave.

The Ashcroft nomination could turn out to be the defining issue of  the presidential transition. Right now, the cowardice of Senate Democrats  is sending an obscene message of contempt toward all Americans who have  struggled against racism since the Civil War.

Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy  (www.accuracy.org), a nationwide consortium of policy researchers with  offices in San Francisco and Washington.