No matter what the circumstances, in politics or out, an employee who believes his or her job is on the line is going to behave a certain way. He or she will be on their best behavior, doing everything possible to impress those who might help decide his or her fate.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales no longer believes his job is on the line, so when he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, he didn’t seem intent on impressing anyone. Gonzales wore the smile of a man with a get-out-of-jail-free card — the president’s unwavering, facts-be-damned support. Consider the lede of the AP article on the hearing:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales confidently deflected House Democrats’ demands Thursday for details in the firings of U.S. attorneys, appearing ever more likely to survive accusations that the dismissals were politically motivated.
“Confidently deflected” is an interesting phrase, isn’t it? Gonzales didn’t add any insights to the scandal that has rocked his Justice Department, he still can’t remember any pertinent details, and he still can’t answer key questions. But Gonzales can “confidently deflect” demands for information because he knows full well that he could sing off-key showtunes for the House Judiciary Committee and there’s nothing lawmakers can do about it.
It’s a stark contrast with a month ago. The Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled a hearing with Gonzales that, we were told, would ultimately decide his fate. Gonzales prepped diligently for weeks — and bombed. Senate Dems were disgusted, Senate Republicans were furious, the White House was disappointed, the media excoriated Gonzales’ incompetence … and the president offered Gonzales unequivocal support.
With this in mind, Gonzales simply doesn’t care anymore. Unless Congress considers impeaching him, Gonzales is acting like a man without a care in the world.
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick explained yesterday’s proceedings perfectly.
Alberto Gonzales is in his happy place. He enters the hearing room in the Rayburn Building for his testimony before the House judiciary committee smiling the smile of a man who sleeps well each night, in the warm glow of the president’s love. Gone is the testy, defensive Gonzales who testified last month before the Senate. Today’s attorney general breezes into the chamber with the certain knowledge that having bottomed out in April, he has nothing left to prove. His only role in this scandal is as decoy: He’s the guy who runs out in front of the hunters and draws their fire so nobody pays any attention to what’s happening at the White House.
Gonzales seems to have made his peace with this. No more angry outbursts, no bitter attempts at self-justification. Instead, the AG answers some questions with a giggle and most others with the same old catchphrases we’ve heard so often: He has consistently failed to investigate any wrongdoing at the Justice Department out of “deference to the integrity of the ongoing investigations.” The decisions about which U.S. attorneys made Kyle Sampson’s magic list were the “consensus recommendations of the senior leadership of the department.” Over and again, ever in identical language, Gonzales “accepts full responsibility for the decision” just as he insists that he played only a “limited role” in the decision-making. The fact that the attorney general can’t even be bothered to pull out a thesaurus after all these weeks — even if only to create the illusion that these nonanswers come from him as opposed to a list of pre-approved talking points — reveals just how little he cares about what Congress and the public think of him anymore.
The House Democrats are furious. To them, there is only one plausible explanation for what happened to the eight (now nine?) fired U.S. attorneys. There is only one narrative that works with the facts. The White House wanted party loyalists placed in either key battleground states, or in states where Republicans were being investigated or they thought Democrats should have been. Gonzales rolled out the welcome mat at the Justice Department and told them to install whomever they wanted while he played hearts on his computer. If Gonzales truly wants to rebut that narrative, he needs only to offer some plausible alternative. Anything at all. But he doesn’t. He offers only distractions.
Our hapless Attorney General didn’t know anything, didn’t do anything, didn’t remember anything. As the WaPo’s Dana Milbank explained, yesterday’s entire hearing was a chance for Gonzales to spend a few hours avoiding anything of any substance at all.
Alberto Gonzales is not a details guy. During the attorney general’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, he was tossed a softball question by Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.), who wanted to know how many lawyers there are in the Justice Department.
Gonzales was flummoxed. “Oh, about, I think, 10,000 to 15,000,” he answered.
So, the nation’s top law-enforcement official thinks maybe he has 10,000 lawyers on staff — or maybe he has 50 percent more than that?
For the record, the answer to Lundgren’s question is Option A: 10,000 lawyers. This tally, of course, doesn’t include the eight U.S. attorneys whose removal Gonzales approved, starting his current woes over alleged politicization of the Justice Department.
But, defying expectations, the list of lawyers working for the Justice Department continues to include Gonzales himself. President Bush’s decision to keep Gonzales has confounded lawmakers in both parties who have called for him to go — but, on the positive side, it gives Gonzales more time to learn all those pesky details about the department he is running.
Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) asked what proportion of Justice’s resources go to counterterrorism. “I don’t know if I can break it down in terms of assets or resources,” Gonzales answered.
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) asked about a Congressional Research Service report about the Justice Department’s firing of U.S. attorneys. “I’m not familiar with the CRS report,” the attorney general said.
Low morale at the Justice Department? “I don’t know what’s the source of that statement.” Why a well-respected U.S. attorney was fired? “That’s something you’d have to ask others.” White House plans to force out another U.S. attorney? “I think I may be aware of that, based on my review. I can’t remember.”
Finally, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) cruelly turned Gonzales’s ignorance against him: “You said you didn’t know who put [U.S. Attorney David] Iglesias on the list” to be fired?
“That is correct,” Gonzales said.
“But you said you knew the president and the vice president didn’t,” Cohen pointed out. “How do you know they didn’t?”
Gonzales paused, trapped. “Well, I just know that they would not do that,” he said.
However befuddled the witness became, he was clearly confident that Bush would let him keep his job. In contrast to the man who took a beating before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month — when even Republican senators disparaged him — Gonzales literally laughed at his questioners yesterday. He chuckled while answering Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), and shook his head and grinned while listening to Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). The attorney general’s coyness about the U.S. attorney firings enraged Robert Wexler (D-Fla.). “You know who put them on the list, but you won’t tell us!” Wexler blurted out.
Gonzales only smiled.
Of course he did. He knew what lawmakers didn’t — that his answers (and their questions) mattered only to them.