Gonzales cramming for big test

April 9, 2007

There’s been a surprising amount of attention lately on embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales preparing for his upcoming Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, which if the conventional wisdom is to be believed, will determine whether he keeps his job. A strong, persuasive performance, in which Gonzales can explain why his fairly obvious lies aren’t as bad as they appear, will lead to his political survival. Anything less, not so much.

Late last week, Gonzales’ prep was literally front-page news in the Washington Post, which reported that Gonzales has “retreated from public view,” in order to spend “hours practicing” for his hearing. The WaPo added that Gonzales has been plotting with GOP heavy-hitters, including former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie, who have been helping him with days of “rigorous mock testimony sessions.”

Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff adds that the Justice Department is “in a state of paralysis” and Gonzales’ closest advisers “are nervous about whether he is up to the task.”

At a recent “prep” for a prospective Sunday talk-show interview, Gonzales’s performance was so poor that top aides scrapped any live appearances. During the March 23 session in the A.G.’s conference room, Gonzales was grilled by a team of top aides and advisers — including former Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie and former White House lawyer Tim Flanigan — about what he knew about the plan to fire seven U.S. attorneys last fall. But Gonzales kept contradicting himself and “getting his timeline confused,” said one participant who asked not to be identified talking about a private meeting. His advisers finally got “exasperated” with him, the source added. “He’s not ready,” Tasia Scolinos, Gonzales’s public-affairs chief, told the A.G.’s top aides after the session was over, said the source. Asked for comment, Scolinos told NEWSWEEK: “This was the first session of this kind that we’d done.” […]

Gonzales remains determined to make his case. He is spending hours alone in his office, poring over documents and calling members of Congress; his staff is planning “murder board” sessions later this week where outsiders may be brought in to play the roles of Judiciary chair Sen. Patrick Leahy or Sen. Chuck Schumer. Gonzales is likely to start out next week’s hearing with a more expansive mea culpa. “The attorney general definitely regrets how this situation has been handled,” said Scolinos. “But he firmly believes that nothing improper was done.”

Former Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who prepped Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for his hearings, said, “In a sense, this is even more difficult than a confirmation hearing, because you are defending a record that has been assailed publicly.” That’s true, but I wholeheartedly agree with Kevin Drum on this: “Everyone prepares for congressional testimony, but this is ridiculous.”

If Gonzales was planning to simply tell the truth, he wouldn’t “keep contradicting himself” in practice sessions and he wouldn’t need to bring his schedule to a standstill in order to figure out what he’s planning to say. He’d just review the appropriate documents to make sure he had his dates straight and then tell Congress what happened.

Obviously, though, that’s not quite what he’s planning to do, is it?

Well, no, probably not. This could be a perfectly simple and straightforward hearing. Gonzales’ comments have contradicted each other and this will be a chance to set the record straight. There won’t be any surprise questions — Gonzales and his team already know what’s controversial and which remarks have drawn the most scrutiny. All he has to do is explain why he wasn’t lying when it appears he was. Easy, right?

Apparently not.

There is, however, one more angle to consider — lowering expectations. If the political world watches Gonzales’ April 17 hearing, expecting his best, and lawmakers are not persuaded, he’s probably toast. Republican lawmakers will start giving the White House the signal: time to send in a reliever, this one has nothing left.

But if the same observers hear about how awful Gonzales is in prep, and expect him to be a blithering idiot during his hearing, he’s bound to exceed expectations. I guess.

Ultimately, there’s one problem Gonzales probably can’t get around: there is no way out. He was involved with the purge, he lied about it, and he got caught. He can cram and pull all-nighters, but unless he has a time machine, I’m afraid he’s stuck.

I get the impression that Abu isn’t quite as bright as he’s long been painted as being.

And please God let him be a blithering idiot….

  • “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

    Telling truth does not require so much practice.

  • There won’t be any surprise questions? I’ll bet there are a few.

    And yes, Gonezales (heh) is an idiot. And idiots always have a way of getting themselves into jams that they can’t get out of by themselves. Cramming for the test won’t help when the lie is based on falsifiable evidence, and the emails and testimony of others will provide plenty of that. But the average American is probably going to be confused by Gonezales and the spinners who are prepping him to do his “whirling dervish” impression.

    What I want to see is the media priming the pump for the next phase after Gonezales falls on his sword. The firings weren’t his idea, they came from Rove and Bush, and they need to be next in line to answer a lot of questions.

  • Why do I keep having these images of Gonzales breaking into tears and then wetting his pants when the questions start to get tough?

  • I have had to give a deposition a couple of times in my life and the one thing I remember is not prepping, but just telling the truth as well as I could remember. IN both instances, I was told that I did very well. If Gonzales is to pass this little test, he has to tell the truth. It’s that simple; if he lies, he will be found out. If he tells the truth, he will either keep his job or lose it. In any event, it is probably not the end of the world for him. He, in all likelihood, has a bright future at FOX news.

  • Let me get this straight…

    There is nary a peep of Republican outrage when:

    Alberto Gonzales spontaneously takes time off (over 3 weeks) to cover his ass and irresponsibily ignores his duty to serve 300 million American citizens…………..

    Yet when Dems responsibily put together an Iraq War spending bill BEFORE leaving for a PLANNED 2 week vacation; Republicans are up in arms that Congress has shirked their responsibilities.

    WTF…….

  • i may be more cynical than most, but i tend to think this is brilliant bar-lowering going on, and the media is buying hook, line and sinker.

    we should not make the same mistake.

    our committee staffers should post the tales of Abu’s long hours on their “locker room wall” as a reminder that they need to redouble their own efforts and bring their A-games. for every weasel-y deception, they will need to hand over the perfect document and knifing question on a moment’s notice.

    the country is very poorly served if through guile or PR tactics he slithers off the hook.

  • What I want to see is the media priming the pump for the next phase after Gonezales falls on his sword. The firings weren’t his idea, they came from Rove and Bush, and they need to be next in line to answer a lot of questions.

    Yup. Gonzales was carrying out orders. It takes a soulless hack like Rove to come up with a plan to subvert the Dept of Justice.

  • This is nothing more than a concerted effort to lower expectations. If Gonzales were to do nothing more than hold his own, those on the right would start crowing about how the Dems “walked into it” or give us a litany of “see, we told you it was much to do about nothing” and then follow that in the campaign season with charges of bad faith on the Ds part rather than true oversight.

    Isikoff’s a smart guy, but he got suckered into this one. Making sure the same doesn’t happen to the rest of us is the first order of business.

  • Gonzales can’t tell the truth, because to do so would reveal what most of us suspect: that this was all about politics, came right out of Rove’s office and, more important, may have been undertaken without the express participation of the president, whose has the sole authority to remove a US Attorney.

    Given what is going on in Minneapolis, and what has been going on in Wisconsin, I think we have just begun to see the level of political interference in the Justice Department, and it all can be traced to the door of one person, in my opinion: Karl Rove.

    I hope they sweat Gonzales until it is running down his pants legs and onto the floor.

  • I see Alberto is opting for the “keep digging” approach to extricate himself from the hole he’s in. This should be fun to watch. His failure at his prep sessions is a tacit admission he’s a poor liar and that probably won’t do much to calm his nerves for the big day.

    I’m even more incredulous of the White House insisting to stay on their lying message. Having Alberto come clean and letting some heads roll would preserve at least a shadow of dignity for this group. Look at the what tossing Rummy did for the DOD’s credibility. With Alberto, it looks like they are willing to sink the ship to save one of the crew. Bon voyage guys.

  • Why do I keep having these images of Gonzales breaking into tears and then wetting his pants when the questions start to get tough?

    [The sister]

    Heh. Glad to hear I’m not the only one. I would not be surprised if he did. Nor would I be surprised if Shrill O’Lielly and the other Fux Snooze flakes screamed themselves stupid over how those mean nasty Dems tortured poor Abbie until he snapped.

  • Well, in lieu of Alberto crying, he could always make sure to have Mrs. Gonzales and the kiddies behind him, tears streaming down their faces…

  • Could this “leak” also be a prelude to an excuse for finally booting him out of DOJ?

    As in, “He’s so f**king stupid he can’t even lie right so we’re kicking him to the curb so we can get someone in who can at least keep the lies straight.”

    He’ll be such a liability from now on even Bush will have to admit he’s causing more harm than good by clinging to his post. If not, we’ll have a really good time anyway!

  • Ahhh…the memories of review week; that dreaded period the week before finals when every section seemed to have at least a few “students” (read: lazier-than-roadkill parasites who rarely showed up for class, and always seemed to find someone to “bun” the lecture-notes from. You could always tell them from the others during review week, when they’d show up with shiny new textbooks that made the “creaking-crack” sound when they were opened (only a never-used book does that).

    Abu reminds me of “those students”—and I always seemed to have the propensity to shoots the filthy little beasts down in flames on the finals.

    One year, I went into the bookstore and bought every last copy of the text—three weeks before the final

    Another year, I gave each student a unique copy of the exam—so that no two students would have the same set of questions.

    But usually, I made it a point to base at least one-third of the final on “questions that were covered exclusively through the reading assignments, and not the lectures.” Those who had not thoroughly “worked the text” would have no chance of successfully navigating the final—and were forever committed to the “ashes of problem students” jar that always occupied my desk.

    *Yes, Virginia—intimidation is a thoroughly successful tactic on the battlefield of pedagogy….*

    For Abu, I would suggest this third regimen. Hit him with items that he cannot have thoroughly prepared himself for, and he will—as “others” have done—“go down in a spiral of flames and smoke….”

    *NOTE: I still find it odd that the vast majority of these scabious whelps who never did the work and expected to be handed a grade “because they had paid for the course” were the pathetic spawn of Republicans. It does, however, explain why the country is in the ridiculous mess that it’s in right now….

  • But if the same observers hear about how awful Gonzales is in prep, and expect him to be a blithering idiot during his hearing, he’s bound to exceed expectations. I guess.

    Worked for Bush– repeatedly

  • Let’s not forget that every day something new is coming out, like WI and MN. He can ‘study’ all he wants, but what in the hell is he going to do when another sub-scandal hits the papers right before his testimony.

    If they keep him long enough, something new is bound to break and contradict his little pack of lies.

    There is no way he comes out clean and with a job. BET.

  • I have been told that Birds of a feather flock together! Dunbya bush and Abu together, what a perfect example of incompetence on display for the world to observed. Somebody please stop this nightmare before dumbya destorys the entire world. He has destroyed America and the rethuglian party and now he going to destory the entire world.

  • To think this mindless goon (who had to actually run away from public questioning earlier last month) is not only 7th in line from the presidency, but was actually considered for a spot on the US Supreme Court, appalls me to this day. He could have been the first Supreme Court Justice whose judicial decisions consisted entirely of him saying, “Mmmm…okay boss!” while punching his open hand like a 40’s gangster thug.

    -L-

  • Like a previous commenter, I have also participated in a couple of depositions, and have testified in court numerous times (all in a professional capacity, fortunately). I certainly tried to be prepared–people’s lives would be affected in major ways by what I said–but I definitely didn’t suspend all my other professional activities for weeks to prepare, as Gonzales apparently is doing. I simply focused on telling the truth as clearly as I could. Something tells me that’s not what Gonzales is practicing to do….

  • The nice thing about his 3 weeks of prepping and having those high flying Republican operatives drilling him on all the potential questions, is that it will not be very believeable if he uses the “I can’t recall” “I don’t remember” etc defense…

    Althought Kyle Sampson used that tactic over a 100 times, and I don’t believe him, you could argue that he didn’t get all that much prep time.

    Gonzales has absolutely no reason to use that phrase, after all he should have learned by now that the memory thingy doesn’t work with a jury (Scooter Libby case)

    It will be interesting nonetheless to see him there. You never know what a Bush operative has up his sleeve. I’ve been surprised on many an occasion how devious they can be.

    —
    To add to comment @7 regarding the 3 weeks off for Gonzales’ prep. Didn’t he fire one of the AG’s for being an absetee landlord because he took off 54(?) days to fulfill his Naval Reserve duties. An AG being fired against Federal discrimination laws for serving his country, and Gonzales takes tax payer paid time off to prep for something that doesn’t need any prep if all you’re gonna do is tell the truth.

    I wonder what the right wingers would say about that? Politics from the Democratic camp?

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