Transcript of Remarks at Official Portrait Unveiling Ceremony of Former Attorney General John Ashcroft

19 November 2006

Transcript of remarks at official portrait unveiling ceremony of former Attorney General John Ashcroft:

WASHINGTON, D.C.

10 A.M. EST

ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO R. GONZALES: Good morning and welcome. This morning on the eve of Thanksgiving celebrations across America, we gather to celebrate the service of John Ashcroft and to say thank you of a job well done as our attorney general during one of the most historic and difficult periods in our nation's history.

We are joined today by many friends and the alumni of the Department of Justice, as well as many special guests. I see that Senator Kit Bond is here; Homeland Security Michael Chertoff; Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. Thank you all for being here. And I want to welcome one and all, whether this is your first time in the Great Hall or a return to once familiar territory, welcome. I also want to offer a special welcome to John's wife, Janet Ashcroft. It's wonderful to see you again, Janet. Our other special guest is the artist for General Ashcroft's portrait, Howard Sanden. I'd like to welcome John and his wife to the department.

You know several members of the media have commented on the different styles between John and me and I suppose that's true. For example John likes blue drapes. I happen to like a more open look. General Ashcroft had an open door policy with the press. Now given John's high regard for reporters, his close association with both American and foreign journalists, it is not surprising that a large member of the media are here for today's hanging. (Laughter.)

Recently I was in Europe in the offices of one of my law enforcement counterparts. As I stood admiring some portraits of foreign ministers, my host disclosed that he was an artist, a political cartoonist, and that he could draw a self-portrait when he left government, thus saving the tax payers and his country a few Euros -- you know where I'm going with this right -- I found the image of John Ashcroft sitting in front of a mirror sketching himself with crayons and watercolors to be very interesting.

Now we know that John has great respect for the tax payer's money and I think we also appreciate that he didn't try to paint his portrait himself, especially given the remarkable talents of Mr. Sanden.

Now continuing with our program please rise and join me in the presentation of the colors and the playing of our National Anthem followed the Pledge of Allegiance.

(Presentation of Colors.)

(Singing of the National Anthem.)

(The Pledge of Allegiance.)

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Please sit down, take your seats.

President Theodore Roosevelt once wrote, and this is one of my favorite quotes, "it is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who was actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does not actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself on a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

When we think of the man in the arena striving valiantly with great enthusiasm and a worthy cause, it is hard not to think of John Ashcroft. In just the short time that I've known him, John has proven again and again his courage and his strength of character. We will soon unveil a portrait of not just an attorney general but of a consummate statesman.

Once governor, once senator, John Ashcroft's record of public service is both long and deep. In each of his public roles he worked tirelessly for the good of the people he served. As a wonderful patriotic hymn says of America's heroes, I think we can say of John Ashcroft: "who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life."

In both his state capital and in his nation's capital, John has been a consistent, modest, and moral leader. Here at the Justice Department, John led ably after September 11th; a time that will stand out in history as one of the most challenging times for our nation when an unthinkable, monstrous, criminal act was also an act of war. And from my vantage point at the White House I saw John step up as a warrior for America.

A few questioned his approach, but I think his willingness to take the fight to the enemy reassured the American people during those darkest days that this government would not back down in the face of adversity, but would take bold steps to protect them.

Like so many of his law enforcement colleagues, John should know that he deserves a substantial portion of the credit for the fact that America has not been attacked in more than five years. Thanks to his cool head and his sightful perspective I believe he will be remembered as being the right man at the right time for this incredibly and complex and challenging job.

John Ashcroft loves his country and believes deeply in the rule of law and that liberty is found in law. He knows that one preserves and protects the other and his public service is a record of that fact. It is right and fitting that from this day forward John Ashcroft's portrait will hang in the Department of Justice because in his public life John Ashcroft has always stood for justice everywhere that he stood.

Ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Attorney General John Ashcroft.

(Applause.)

ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT: Thank you very much. Thank you. Please sit down. Thank you very much.

My father would have been proud and my mother would have believed every word of it. I am grateful. I want to thank God for the opportunities that I have enjoyed in public life, the most satisfying and challenging of which was found within these walls. I want to thank President Bush and the American people for the opportunity I had to serve. I'm grateful to Attorney General Gonzales for his kindness to me and for his service.

I want to thank Kit Bond who, when I demonstrated my capacity to lose elections in 1972 thought that, you know, the future may not be as dark as that election was, and he appointed me to public office which gave me an opportunity to serve. I don't know if he, at that time, understood that I would later mature to be not only a politician who became an election winner but also the individual, only individual in the history of the United States, to lose a Senate seat to a deceased opponent, but I thank him for that.

It's a delight to see Attorney General Thornburgh here and Virginia. It's nice that you would be here, and to see Secretary Chertoff and Secretary Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor. It's very pleasing. I'm grateful that you're here.

I want to thank particularly David Aires and his family for coming. David was my chief of staff and is a person with whom I share an opportunity now. I want to thank Jeff Brock, who is the dean of the Regent University Law School who oversees some of my contact with students and had the wisdom to schedule me to be attendant each semester for two weeks. That's enough time to be exposed to students but not to contaminate them and I'm grateful for that opportunity, Jeff, thank you for coming.

Last but not least I want to thank my wife Janet for her kindness to me and for her consistent support. I want to thank the artist and his wife, Elizabeth. John Sanden is a person of tremendous talent but he's also a person of great personal warmth and I find it to be very pleasing to deal with a person who has great talent but who has a sense of humility about it. And I also am grateful for an artist whose sense of mercy exceeds his sense of justice. You'll know what I mean as soon as this blue drape exposes.

In a way, portraits of attorneys general bring to mind many epochs in the history of this department. But frankly when I think of the four year opportunity and interval that I had to serve America as attorney general, I won't think of the noble work of John Sanden, but I will think of a classic work done when the brushes that touched the canvas of America were held in your hands; a classic work that I believe boldly created with strokes of confidence, a kind of marking of America with liberty and justice that was to be appreciated by me certainly, and I think by the American people.

It was a canvas that showed a community with record low violent crime rates as a result of the brushes in your hands. It showed a bright market place of renewed corporation integrity which had once been marred with reporting which defrauding the American people and investors of billions of dollars. The painting and portrait which you have painted which will reflect the history of this interval in American justice shows the dawning of a generation with reduced drug use and elevated potential for young people because of it.

Last but not least, the portrait which you helped paint with the brushes in your hands was a portrait of a serene landscape absent the horror of recurring terrorism. And there's something unique about the portrait that you painted when the brushes were in your hands. You painted that portrait carefully in a pre- existing frame, the nature of which exceeds the beauty even of the portrait you painted. For the frame represents the highest art that humanity has ever attained, the Constitution of the United States. To work within that framework and to paint in that setting and to do so successfully is the noble work that justice has the opportunity to achieve. And when I remember the portrait that reflects on this department's great work, it is your work, the brushes in your hands, that I will remember.

The Justice Department of the United States was created in 1870 as America struggled to complete the surgery which was necessary to remediate American liberties most heinous birth defect: slavery. In understanding that setting, I think we see most clearly what the responsibility and opportunity of justice really is. It is the virtuous duty of justice to prevent one man from using his freedom to enslave another man.

As we look to the future, the calling of justice, that noble calling, calls for us, I think, to always keep in mind this responsibility of justice, to make sure that no one uses his freedom to enslave or otherwise injure another. It demands that we continue with intensity our effort to resist the terrorists with all of our might. For like no others the terrorists use freedom and the cover of freedom, and prostitute liberty in order to dominate individuals rather than to liberate individuals and that is something it is the opportunity and duty of justice to resist. The terrorist perverts freedom to impose rather than to inspire and justice has the noble opportunity to make sure that he is not successful. Should we turn from this task we would be unworthy of the great freedom that has been brought to us.

Another threat to liberty cries out for the attention of justice in the days ahead as we turn our vision from the portrait of the past which is fixed to the canvas of the future which is open while the brushes remain in our hands. And that additional threat to liberty which cries out for the attention of justice is the cancer of corruption. The voices of justice and the defense of liberty must be clear and they must be unmistakable. Those who are endowed with the public trust shall not be tolerated in the perversion of the public trust.

Justice, its noble calling and its noble opportunity shall be to expose corruption wherever it is found; justice will excise it wherever it infects; and justice will pursue its punishment with persistence. Freedom itself is the opportunity to have the brush in one's hands.

Tom Paine said it at the time of the American independence, "we have it within our power to make the world over again." No one can change the past. Each of us has the opportunity to shape the future. It should be shaped and we have the noble responsibility, duty, and opportunity to shape it in a way which respects liberty; and steps between those and the public, steps between those who would pervert freedom and the public to guard to public interest. For those who would use their freedom to enslave others, perverted in ways that disrespect the very essence of what American liberty has come to mean and what this department stands for.

Sometimes the words that we say in memory become trite. There are words of recitation more than they are words of reality. But when we conclude the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States, we talk about not just the ideals of America but the charge and challenge of the Department of Justice because we talk about the fact that there is a necessity that we have liberty and justice for all.

What a privilege it has been for me to be associated with charge and with you and with this great department. I am honored to be here today and thankful and grateful for my association with you. I am grateful for what you have done; the picture you have painted. I am thrilled that the brush is still in your hand and that the landscape and canvas to be filled in the future will reflect the respect for liberty and justice in a profound way and will always be framed in the Constitution of the United States. Thank you very much, and God bless you.

(Applause.)

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: I'd like to invite the Attorney General, Mrs. Ashcroft, and Mr. Sanden in the unveiling of the portrait.

(Unveiling of the portrait.)

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Thank you. We are all honored to have been part of this very special ceremony. I encourage all of you, colleagues, friends, and family to join us on the fifth floor for refreshments and a chance to take a closer look at this wonderful piece of art. I guess that means it's going to be moved up there. I hope we don't damage it on the way up. It has been a pleasure to host you at the Department of Justice this morning. Thank you for coming.

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