O rdinarily, sounding foolish and inarticulate wouldn’t be a firing offense – certainly not in the Bush administration. But John Tanner, chief of the Justice Department’s Voting Section, made his inept comments about elderly minority voters at the National Latino Congreso.

He did it just three weeks before testifying in Congress about the direction of the office he supervises. And video of his bumbling was posted – and skewered – on The BRAD BLOG, and then made its way to YouTube.

Democrats have enthusiastically obliged Tanner’s (presumably inadvertent) “hit me” invitation.

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama wants him fired. So does New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who on Tuesday headed a House subcommittee hearing during which black members chastised Tanner for stereotyping and bad judgment, among other faults.

It might look like opportunistic piling on to a repentant career federal employee, except that the politicking runs much deeper than that. Tanner seems to embody the deterioration of the Justice Department’s focus, morale and reputation under leadership driven primarily by partisan goals.

“John Tanner is both the cause and the effect of the politicizing of the Civil Rights Division,” testified Toby Moore, who spent six years as the Voting Section’s geographer. “Until someone in the department, in this administration or the next, admits to the mistakes of the past several years and restores credible leadership, the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division will remain a wounded institution.”

(Read Moore’s written testimony at www.judiciary.house.gov/oversight. aspx ?ID389.)

Complaints that Tanner and former Justice Department officials Bradley Schlozman and Hans von Spakovsky were undermining the department have been percolating for some time. Former Voting Section Chief Joe Rich, who spent 37 years in the Civil Rights Division, sounded alarms during a March hearing.

Then, at an Oct. 5 panel discussion, Tanner tried to explain why the Justice Department had approved a harsh Georgia voter-ID law in 2005. Opponents said it would harm older minorities because they’re less likely to have government-issued IDs. Four of the five Voting Section staffers who had analyzed the law (including Moore) had recommended against it.

Here’s what Tanner said, according to the video:

“I think that it’s probably true that among those who don’t (have IDs), it’s primarily elderly persons. And that’s a shame. You know, creating problems for elderly persons just is not good under any circumstance.

“Of course, that also ties in with a racial aspect, because our society is such that minorities don’t become elderly the way that white people do. They die first.

“There are inequities in health care. There are a variety of inequities in this country. So anything that disproportionately impacts the elderly, has the opposite impact on minorities. Just the math is such as that.”

Maybe he was just incredibly clumsy in pointing out that whites have longer life expectancies than minorities.

But should that disparity lead to the conclusion that elderly minorities don’t vote in large numbers? Or that ID requirements wouldn’t impede them? Are life expectancies any way to justify a law aimed at curtailing a supposed problem of voter fraud?

Tanner didn’t help perceptions by earlier telling the Georgia NAACP that poor people tend to have IDs because check-cashing outlets require them (according to a Washington Post report).

At Tuesday’s hearing, Tanner apologized that his “explanation of the data came across in a hurtful way.” But Moore called the comments “a fair example of his approach to the facts, the truth and the law.”

“Broad generalizations, deliberate misuse of statistics and casual supposition, in my experience, were preferred over the analytical rigor, impartiality and scrupulous attention to detail that had marked the work of the section prior to Tanner taking control in 2005,” Moore said.

Tanner defended his tenure by saying the Voting Section has filed 23 suits under his leadership to enforce parts of the Voting Rights Act.

But he’s also overseen an aggressive effort to pressure states, based on possibly flawed numbers, to purge their voter rolls, AlterNet reported on www.campaignlegalcenter.org.

Texas was among 10 states to which Tanner wrote in April, saying that “voter registration actually exceeded the total citizen voting age population in 10 percent or more” jurisdictions. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office sent the Justice Department a statewide list of registered voters, even though (Tanner’s letter acknowledges) one already had been provided after a similar request in August 2006.

“We understand they are conducting an investigation and are confident that they will find that our list maintenance procedures, which have been precleared by DOJ, are in compliance with the National Voter Registration Act,” secretary of state spokeswoman Ashley Burton said in an e-mail.

Heading into a presidential election year, Michael Mukasey – if he’s confirmed – or whoever is the next attorney general will have to move quickly to make sure the Justice Department is fairly enforcing voting laws and is publicly perceived as doing so.