A Job Well Done

To no one's surprise, John Ashcroft has announced his resignation as attorney general of the United States.

There has not been, in my lifetime, a public figure more unfairly, viscously maligned than Ashcroft. To hear his critics tell it, he's nothing more than a tyrannical, rednecked bumpkin intent on establishing an American theocracy. He's been hated with a vehemence usually directed towards dictators and serial killers, mainly for the capital crime of professing Christian faith and having a few Bible studies in his office.

But outside of the fevered, irrational imaginations of addle-brained liberals, Ashcroft is in reality a decent, accomplished, and great man who has reached the highest points of electoral politics short of the presidency. He's humble and low-key, in startling contrast to the power-grabbing zealot he's caricatured as.

In his career, he's graduated from Yale with honors, written several legal textbooks, been the two-term governor of Missouri, a United States senator, and the U.S. attorney general during one of the most difficult periods in recent American history. Offhand, I can't think of a single one of his detractors who can boast of such credentials...though their pronounced inferiority to him doesn't stop them from ignorantly flapping their gums.

Thank you and God bless you, General Ashcroft, for a job well done.