WASHINGTON — "In the end, every decision I make will be based only on the facts and the law," a beleaguered Janet Reno last week told congressional Republicans critical of her handling of the Justice Department's probe of campaign finance irregularities. "That is what the American people deserve from their attorney general."
But whatever the public deserves, the mounting complaints about Reno's refusal so far to seek appointment of a special prosecutor in the fund-raising investigation make clear that her civics-book description of her job falls far short of reality.
Like a number of her modern predecessors, the 78th attorney general of the United States is plagued by the uniquely split nature of her position. In her role as the nation's chief law enforcement official, Reno is exactly what she suggested in her congressional testimony--the guardian of the legal system, a posture that sets her apart from her fellow Cabinet members. But like every other member of the Clinton Cabinet, she is also the instrument of the political will of the president, committed to the success of his administration and subject to dismissal at his pleasure.
This tension between law and politics "has made the attorney general a lightning rod," said Nancy V. Baker, a New Mexico State University political scientist and author of the book "Conflicting Loyalties," which depicts the inherent division of the job. And so sharp and deeply rooted is this division that each attempt to offset its consequences has triggered as many problems as it has solved.
"We have expectations that the attorney general is going to be completely neutral," Baker noted. "But that's an impossibility, because law and politics are intertwined."
The potential for at least the appearance of conflict was carved into the Constitution. But the controversies swirling around the Justice Department's massive limestone battlements 10 blocks from the White House have heightened in recent decades, as the expanding reach of executive power has intensified public suspicions about the conduct of presidents, thus putting attorneys general on the spot.
"We have escalated the pursuit of executive malfeasance to a very high level," said Terry H. Eastland, former spokesman for President Reagan's attorneys general, William French Smith and Edwin Meese III, an attitude Eastland attributes largely to the twin traumas of the Vietnam War and Watergate. "It's the modern temper."
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