Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 13, 1993 TAG: 9302150270
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
AT LAST, A WINNING CALL TO JUSTICE?
IT LOOKS like the third time will be the charm. President Clinton's choice of Miami prosecutor Janet Reno for attorney general just might turn the embarrassing bumbling of his search thus far into a blessing.Clinton presented Reno to the nation as a "frontline crime fighter," and that was no hyperbole. She's been leading the attack for 15 years in one of the toughest combat zones imaginable. In Dade County, Fla., she and a staff of 238 lawyers have prosecuted more than 40,000 felony cases a year - homicides, drug smuggling, street violence - the ugliest battles being fought in the nation's urban centers.
She has credibility when she says she'll be tough on violent crime. Just as promising, though, are her goals to press civil rights cases, fight child abuse and reform juvenile justice - all areas where she's had success in Florida.
If the Senate approves and she emerges from the trenches to head the Justice Department, she will come with a reputation for unimpeachable integrity. That is critically important for the nation's top law enforcement agency, which has been stalled by its own ethics problems, ideological detours, internal fighting and, most recently, the delay in getting a new chief.
Her record is not unblemished. Critics say she has not been aggressive enough in prosecuting public corruption cases. But in many cases, her office conducted the probes that produced federal prosecutions.
Also, at the start of her career, she had strained relations with the black community in racially volatile Dade County. Riots broke out in 1980 after her office lost its prosecution of white police officers who had beaten a black insurance man to death.
But that makes all the more impressive her support now in the black community, where she is praised for recruiting minorities to her staff and being color-blind in her duties.
Indeed, that indicates an ability to grow in office - and a political toughness and savvy to rival Clinton's. The Democratic prosecutor has become the top vote-getter in the largely Republican Miami area.
Reno is single and childless. The administration is certain there is no "nannygate" embarrassment in her past to sabotage this nomination. It is unfortunate, if childlessness is a qualification for the office, that it has come to this. But it is fortunate that the tortuous path - treading over the reputations of Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood - has led to the nomination of a candidate at least as well qualified as the previous nominees.
Assuming the Senate Judiciary Committee uncovers nothing worse than, say, the fact that both of her parents were newspaper reporters, Reno should win quick confirmation and get back to work. The Justice Department cries out for leadership.