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Ashcroft Is Bush's 'Johnny Appleseed' John L. PerryAttorney General John Ashcroft is fast becoming the "Johnny Appleseed" of the Bush administration, traveling the land, smiling and scattering federal grants to the locals. Ashcroft's extensive travel is one of the important "piece parts," as strategic planners are wont to call their tactical components, of the "kinder, gentler" (as in the elder) Bush that master White House political strategist Karl Rove is rolling out to enhance the image of the father's son, the current President Bush. It is timed to precede the Labor Day return to Washington by the president and Congress. Rove's plan is to soften opposition to the Bush program on Capitol Hill by emphasizing among constituents back home the compassionate half of the compassionate-conservative that Bush the younger portrayed in his successful run for the presidency. All Hands Turning To If one watches closely enough, members of the Bush Cabinet, as well as other key administration figures, are to be seen popping up here, there and everywhere being kinder, gentler, more compassionate. It is Rove's way of buffing down the abrasive edges that Democrats have rasped in the public mind about the Republican in the Oval Office – poisoner of drinking water, oil-driller in the midst of calving caribou cows, errand-runner for Texas-crony oil barons, pension-snatcher and prescription-blocker of the aged and infirm and so on and so forth. No one on the Bush top team has leapt to the task with greater alacrity and élan than John Ashcroft, arguably the most conservative of the lot, and certainly not considered a gadabout or free spender. Yet, there he was Thursday in Tennessee, the virtual home state of Al Gore, the Democrats' candidate Bush defeated. Sowing Tomorrow's Crops Like the legendary Johnny Appleseed, whose real name was John Chapman, the attorney general was scattering the Bush administration's seeds of potential political harvests to come, in the form of grant money from the Treasury. Not peanuts, either. And all for compassionate works, too. In Memphis, at the far-western end of this long, narrow parallelogram of a state, which Bush carried at the expense of Gore, enabling him to win the presidency last year, it was $314,000 that Appleseed Ashcroft pulled from his sack to assist victims of abuse. In the middle of the state, Nashville, where Gore is stretching his hamstrings for another run at the White House three years hence, Ashcroft had $360,000 to help Vanderbilt University combat violence against women on campus. In East Tennessee, solid GOP territory, Ashcroft had $200,000 to bestow on the police of Knoxville, whose Mayor Victor Ashe was George W. Bush's roommate at Yale University. A Piece of the Avalanche That grant goes to continue the funding of the Knoxville Police Department's multi-agency task force to combat pornography on the Internet directed at children. It's part of what the Bush administration calls its national Operation Avalanche law-enforcement program against porn. One of 30 such task forces around the country with that mission, the Knoxville effort has been so successful it has gained nationwide applause. The attorney general was in town to add to that recognition, in the process garnering coverage on the front page of the Knoxville newspaper and on the local television news shows. It wasn't just reporters Ashcroft was reaching. An assembly hall in the City-County Building was jammed to overflowing with state and local elected officials and law-enforcement officers. They all have family members, friends and constituents whom they can influence. Bypassing the Washington Media And that's part of Rove's cagey strategy. There is just so much mileage a president can get trying to wedge his programs and messages into the Washington news media's packed daily news "budgets," as they are called in the trade. Outside the Beltway, though, it's a snap to become one, if not the biggest, of the local stories of the day. A hustling Cabinet member may, as Ashcroft did, hit at least three major localities in a day. Multiply that by all the key administration salesmen working the territory during this summer recess from the legislative wars, and before long you're talking real impact. Ashcroft is certainly not a static player. On the Road Again In the same week he spread his apple seeds along the more than 500-mile breadth of Tennessee, the attorney general was winning friends and influencing people in:
Ashcroft was in Phoenix, addressing and mingling with the Fraternal Order of Police, bearing Bush's message of federal support for those who enforce the law.
That's a grassroots program involving local agencies and individuals to help prevent and control crime and improve neighborhoods.
What Comes Naturally This is not drudge work for Ashcroft, whose heart really is in these programs. As the Knoxville News-Sentinel recounted, he told the crowd that turned out there in support of the administration's program against child porn: "The Internet offers a dangerous combination of anonymity, instant credibility in the eyes of kids and a large pool of unsupervised children. "It has almost become a new marketplace for trafficking and marketing child pornography." Good Seed vs. the Bad That, Ashcroft said, "is why the work of Knoxville's and the other task forces is so important." "The Knoxville task force is an outstanding example of the interagency cooperation needed to effectively investigate, prosecute and prevent online child sexual exploitation. "When we work together, there is no limit to what we can do, and when we fragment our efforts, there is no limit to the failure we will encounter." Throughout the Midwest, where Johnny Appleseed scattered his seeds during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there remain today numerous orchards and individual trees, still bearing fruit.
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