He holds an honorary degree from racially retrograde Bob Jones University. He has praised Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, the confederate generals, and Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.

As a senator, he launched a venomous crusade to scuttle the nomination of David Satcher, President Clinton's pick for surgeon general, because, Ashcroft said, Satcher opposed a ban on partial-birth abortion. Ashcroft lost that battle.

But he nailed Ronnie White, the first black judge on the Missouri Supreme Court, when Clinton proposed him for a federal judgeship. Ashcroft said that White coddled criminals and routinely overturned death sentences. These were blatant falsehoods. According to the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police, White's record on the death penalty was no different from that of Ashcroft- appointed judges -- and these police advocates found no evidence that he showed any pro-defendant bias while on the state court.

Ashcroft also fought hard to sabotage Bill Lann Lee's appointment to head the Justice Department's civil rights division. Lee's sin was that he was too much in favor of affirmative action.

As attorney general, Ashcroft poses a mortal threat in these hypercharged areas: civil rights enforcement, hate crimes, police violence, the death penalty and judicial appointments.

Under Attorney General Janet Reno, the civil rights division wrung consent decrees from city officials in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles to rein in corrupt and brutal police practices.

Ashcroft is more likely to take a cue from his boss on police reform. Bush said that it is not the job of the Justice Department to "second guess" local police agencies. He virtually lifted a page from Papa Bush's script on police. A decade earlier, President Bush's press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, told reporters, "It's not our role to comment on individual police departments."

Little has changed. Complaints of police abuse continue to rise, and federal prosecutors continue to downplay them. According to a 1999 report by Human Rights Watch, fewer than 1 percent of allegations of police abuse investigated by the FBI resulted in charges of excessive force by police. Reno took tepid and tentative steps to deal with the problem. Ashcroft probably won't do that much.

As a senator, Ashcroft opposed any expansion of hate-crimes laws. And Bush, despite garbled denials that he was soft on hate-crimes legislation -- charges leveled at him following the dragging murder of James Byrd by white supremacists -- did nothing to strengthen hate crime laws in Texas.

The overwhelming majority of prisoners awaiting federal execution are black.

Ashcroft is a cheerleader for the death penalty at every turn. Bush says that he sees no need for a moratorium on federal executions. He almost certainly would not have granted a federal inmate the six-month stay of execution that Clinton did pending review of gaping racial disparities in those given the federal death penalty.

A little-known part of the attorney general's job is to advise the president on judicial nominations. When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas worked as an aide to Missouri Sen. John Danforth, Ashcroft shared an office with him. He adores Thomas's strict constructionist judicial philosophy, and so does Bush. What kind of judges Ashcroft will advise Bush to pick is no mystery.

Two decades ago, Reagan chose another right-wing ideologue, William Bradford Reynolds, to head the civil rights division at the Department of Justice. Reynolds giddily went about wrecking affirmative action programs. He disdained any crackdown on hate crimes and turned a blind eye toward police violence. Bush's Justice Department almost certainly will dash back to those lax and contentious days in civil rights enforcement.

The great irony is that Ashcroft lost his re-election bid because black voters in Missouri (a state Bush won) stampeded to the polls to punish him for his Stone Age stance on civil rights. A further twist is that Ashcroft lost his Senate seat to a dead man. Missouri voters elected the state's deceased governor, Mel Carnahan, who was killed in a plane crash three weeks before the election. Carnahan's name remained on the ballot, and the state's new Democratic governor promised to appoint Carnahan's widow to the Senate if Carnahan won.

Civil rights groups will, and should, protest John Ashcroft's nomination. But as a former member of the chummy Senate fraternity, he'll likely be confirmed. And once in as attorney general, he will get his chance to wreak revenge.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the author of "The Disappearance of Black Leadership" (Middle Passage Press, 2000).

©2000 San Francisco Chronicle

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