We love these guys, but where do they find ‘em? Answer: just about anywhere. When the heart gets bitter, the mind warps in sympathy. I imagine George W. and the boys from Brazil in their hoss-wrangler drag, lolling around a clubhouse decorated by the set designer from Bonanza: bronze Remington cowboy-on-rearing-horse lamp stand, long-horn steer mounted over mantelpiece, signed photo of Sonny Bono.

"We set ’em up real good what with all them colored and womens in the cabinet," Little George is saying (smirk), "now what kin we do to really blow their lids?" And when Trent Lott, in that dopey cowboy hat with feathers, gets up and says, "Got one word fer y’all, pardners, and that is ‘Ashcroft,’" man, they practically choke on their barbeque.

"Bullseye!" says George the First. "Couldn’t have come up with a better one myself—though I gotta say my Clarence Thomas thing wasn’t too shabby."

I mean, how the hell do they know? How did they manage to get it so damn right? Ashcroft is a beaut—just the kinda guy we love to hate. He’s bristling with malice and fully loaded with all the nutty, right-wing, crackpot ideas you could ever want. This whole Bush junta is straight out of a Tom Clancy novel—Dick Cheney as the guy down by the lake plotting the murder of the liberal senator; John Ashcroft as the racist governor caught in a love-nest scandal involving an underage black go-go girl; Christine Whitman, the WASPish, jodhpur-wearing Governess getting her kicks on thrill-seeking night jaunts with New Jersey death-squad troopers—handcuffing, frisking, and roughing up random black men who’ve made the mistake of driving on the New Jersey Turnpike in cars that seem too expensive for them. Ah, it’s all too good to be true! I feel my adrenaline rising. It’s been kind of a let-down around here since the chad wars.

But, seriously, what can this be about? Is Ashcroft a sop to the right-wing extremists? Or is it a ploy? Knowing the senate won’t confirm Ashcroft, George gets his right-wing kudos while not having to actually deal with the barking-mad idiot. Or maybe this is one issue Georgie really believes in. As if! As if Mini-Me decides anything. There is really no need to decide anything anyway. This is the retro administration. It’s all already happened once before. This is the Eisenhower era redux—twelve millionaires and a plumber in the cabinet in Ike’s cabinet and this one’s pretty close to that. Actually, you’d have to go all the way back to Calvin Coolidge’s cabinet to find a bunch of old farts like these all in the same room. It’s the return of the mummies. Out with the old, in with the older! Two appointees from the Ford administration? Are they kidding? And then there’s Don Evans, the Tinfoil Man (CEO of Alcoa Aluminum), as Secretary of the Treasury—a really healthy, progressive industry, that.

These guys are still trying to figure out how to set the clock on their VCRs, how are they going to deal with the new high-tech economy? My first question to any of these old boys would be: Do you surf the Web? Then I’d get right to the hard questions: What do you think about Napster? As a matter of fact, what is Napster?

What we have here is the Lazarus Brigade. Of recent Bush appointees, six served in Bush Number One’s administration, four under Reagan, the aforementioned two under Ford, and, god help us, one in the Nixon administration. Oh nur-ur-se! Believe me, these are the guys who need a prescription-drug benefit, whatever their position on the subject. Hey, remember prescription drugs, privatizing social security, and what percent of the so-called surplus we should spend on what? I know, I know, the mind freezes over. A lot of chads under the bridge since then, hey folks? The most boring election ever, followed by the most exciting five weeks since impeachment (and O.J.).

But back to the subject at hand. What is this Republican obsession with turning back the clock? We’ve had the Reagan Years, an attempt to turn politics into a fifties TV show. We’ve had the George I replay of Woodrow Wilson, and Gerald Ford’s attempt-to-stop-time period. Was life better for the majority of people, say, fifty, a hundred, a hundred-and-fifty years ago? I don’t think so. But clearly John Ashcroft does. In an article about slavery he claimed that slave owners promoted happy families by not breaking up family units. Uh huh. I suggest he take a look at Bullwhip Days or any other collection of slave narratives (or the grisly photographs of dead and scarred slaves).

Then there’s Ashcroft’s honorary degree from Bob Jones University. An institute of stupefyingly reactionary attitudes. No dating between blacks and whites? And, by the way, the Catholic church is a cult—an idea that would have gone down nicely in Rome circa 60 AD. Let’s face it, anyone who claims that ex-Klan Grand Wizard David Duke is a "populist spokesman for America" is beyond the pale. Way. And to defend Ashcroft’s clearly racist agenda (he led the opposition in the Senate to the nomination of Justice Ronnie White, the first black justice on the Missouri Supreme Court, to a federal court seat by labeling him "pro-criminal"), what do his supporters say? Well, aside from the usual boilerplate hogwash—"he’s a man of high integrity and impeccable Jurisprudence, whose war record speaks for itself," they offer the following acts of tokenism and showboating: that he signed into law a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King; created an award in the name of a black educator (and inventor of peanut butter), George Washington Carver; and had Scott Joplin’s home preserved as a museum.

We’re talking about a man who is against clean needle exchange programs and the National Endowment for the Arts. Oh yeah, and, along with his crony Dub-yah, he’s a great admirer of Clarence Thomas. He’s got a 100% rating from the Christian Coalition and zero ratings from the League of Conservation Voters and the National Organization for Women. Talk about polarizing!

He’s a lock-step conservative who endorses virtually all of Pat Roberston’s positions. This in itself would be scary enough, but Ashcroft is actually considered to the right of Jesse Helm’s on almost every issue. He is, of course, a card-carrying member of the anti-abortion/pro-death-penalty club, what Elayne Boozler calls the fisherman’s philosophy: throw ’em back until they’re big enough to fry.

Worst of all, Ashcroft is suffering from severe psychological problems and is more dangerous than ever. Have you seen his eyes? A friend of mine was on a talk show with him recently and swears they glowed. Now Ashcroft is crazier than ever, and who can blame him? He just lost his recent re-election bid ... to a dead man.