Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee again tomorrow, where he’ll no doubt face questions about the U.S. Attorney scandal. To help lay the groundwork for his defense, Gonzales submitted 26 pages of prepared testimony. Apparently, he’s going to do what he’s been doing.
[Gonzales] says he’s staying at the Justice Department to try to repair its broken image, telling Congress in a statement released Monday he’s troubled that politics may have played a part in hiring career federal prosecutors. […]
After months of critics calling for his resignation, Gonzales appears to have weathered the political furor that began with the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year and subsequently revealed a Justice Department hiring process that favored Republican loyalists.
I understand what Time magazine means when it says Gonzales has “weathered the political furor,” but it’s worth stepping back to consider how we reached this point. The AG managed to keep his job by hiding, putting his hands over his ears, and getting a thumbs-up from the only other person in the country who believes Gonzales should be the nation’s chief law-enforcement official: the president. That’s not impressive; it’s shameful.
I suppose there’s some progress in Gonzales’ concession that political considerations might have driven the unprecedented purge of nine U.S. Attorneys, as well as the routine (and illegal) hiring of career DoJ employees.
“I believe very strongly that there is no place for political considerations in the hiring of our career employees or in the administration of justice,” he said. “As such, these allegations have been troubling to hear. From my perspective, there are two options available in light of these allegations. I would walk away or I could devote my time, effort and energy to fix the problems. Since I have never been one to quit, I decided that the best course of action was to remain here and fix the problems.”
Those would be the problems he a) helped create; b) ignored; and c) made worse.
Of course, once again, we’re reminded that in Bush’s America, merit and accountability are irrelevant.
Gonzales has become the most reviled man in the administration, after having been caught lying and losing control of the Justice Department. The political norms of Washington say Gonzales has to go. Bush, meanwhile, is The Decider — and The Decider doesn’t much care about rules.
A couple of months ago, the New York Daily News quoted a “senior Republican” saying, “[Bush] wants to fight, but that will change because it has to.”
But it doesn’t “have to.” It only “has to” if the president wants to be a responsible leader in a political system in which conduct has meaning.
Slate recently concluded, “It is just about universally agreed upon that Gonzales will go down in history as the attorney general who helped the president: 1) torture, 2) wreak havoc on civil liberties, 3) fire U.S. attorneys who didn’t prosecute along preferred political lines, 4) demoralize the Department of Justice, 5) worsen Bush’s already dismal relationship with Congress, and 6) relentlessly hector a man in the intensive care unit.”
And yet, Gonzales enters tomorrow’s hearing knowing that no matter what he says, no matter how much he lies, no matter how often he dodges, Bush is going to keep him on the job. It must be liberating.