As attorney general, John Ashcroft was a model of moral rectitude to his conservative supporters. To his liberal detractors, he was overly self-righteous. Mr. Ashcroft sees himself simply as a man of integrity, and to him that is worth a lot.
So in the era of the Jack Abramoff scandal, Mr. Ashcroft has become a Washington lobbyist, setting himself up as something of an anti-Abramoff and marketing his insider's knowledge of how Washington works.