John Ashcroft, the United States attorney general and the embodiment of the Christian right in the Bush administration, announced his resignation on Tuesday night, marking the start of a second-term reshuffle.
In a five-page handwritten letter to the president, Ashcroft claimed to have made Americans safe from crime and terror and said his ”energies and talents” should now be directed elsewhere. He was ill with pancreatitis earlier this year and had his gall bladder removed.
The resignation of Don Evans, the commerce secretary was also announced on Tuesday night, and other departures are expected before President Bush is inaugurated for a second term in January.
As attorney general, Ashcroft has been a champion of the religious right and a lightning rod for liberals for his overt opposition to abortion, his support of gun-owners’ rights, and his measures to expand the powers of the police and FBI in the name of the Patriot Act, introduced after the September 11 attacks.
His resignation letter was unapologetic.
”The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved,” he wrote.
”Yet I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration … I believe that my energies and talents should be directed toward other challenging horizons.”
It was unclear on Tuesday night to what extent the resignation was a result of White House pressure. Ashcroft’s heavily ideological leadership had created resentment in the justice department.
Early on in his tenure, he was ridiculed for covering a nude female statue in the lobby of the departmental headquarters, and for obliging employees to sing along to a patriotic song, Let the Eagle Soar, that he had penned himself.
The choice of Ashcroft’s replacement as attorney general may be an important sign of how Bush’s intends to govern in his second term.
One possible choice is one of Bush’s former deputies, Larry Thompson, who would be America’s first black attorney general. He is less ideological than Ashcroft and much better liked within the justice department. However, he may be reluctant to leave a new well-paying executive job at PepsiCo.
Another possibility is the White House lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, best known recently for signing a memorandum suggesting that the Geneva Convention did not apply to captives in the ”war on terror”. But he is also in line to take a seat on the supreme court.
Other names that have been mentioned in connection with the justice department job are Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor, who has enormous popularity nationwide but who may be too liberal on social issues for core Republican supporters, and Marc Racicot, a former Montana governor and Republican party chairman, who helped run Bush’s re-election campaign. He is almost certain to be given a senior job in the next term.
Evans, an old friend from Bush’s Texas days who helped him raise money for his state and national election battles, said in his letter he was leaving for personal reasons.
”While the promise of your second term shines bright, I have concluded with deep regret that it is time for me to return home,” Evans wrote.
There is expected to be a string of further resignations from the Bush Cabinet, as its members seek higher-paying jobs in the private sector.
The greatest attention has been focused on Colin Powell, the secretary of state, Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defence and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. They are all are expected to leave their current jobs in the course of the second Bush term, if not before. – Guardian Unlimited Â