On several occasions, Slate has toyed with a fun little feature called the (fill in the blank)-o-meter. There was the Saddameter (tracking the likelihood of an Iraqi invasion), the Clintometer (gauging the likelihood of the Lewinsky scandal forcing Clinton from office), and the Miers-o-Meter (measuring the likelihood of Harriet Miers’ confirmation to the Supreme Court).
Back on March 20, Slate created the Gonzo-Meter, to measure the likelihood of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales being forced to leave the Bush administration. It obviously wasn’t scientific; it was the opinion of Slate’s Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and Dahlia Lithwick. But it was also a rather entertaining way of gauging the daily Gonzales-related headlines — when there was really bad news for the AG, the Gonzo-Meter would inch closer and closer to 100% (at which point Gonzales would be toast).
This week, Slate shut down the Gonzo-Meter. Bazelon, Dickerson, and Lithwick came to a frustrating realization: it doesn’t matter what Gonzales does or how serious the evidence against him is.
When we first launched this enterprise, we truly believed that the sun rose in the east and gravity worked. We were wrong. As we have increasingly observed, most notably on the days the AG testified before Congress, some mystical alchemy provides that the worse he does, the better his chances become of remaining in office. At this point, just about nothing Gonzales does could cause the president to fire him…. So we drop the Gonzo-Meter to zero, in the perverse hope that Bush might start to believe that ditching his AG is his own idea, not ours. […]
We’ve no doubt the scandal will only blossom and grow, and we’ll keep watching it and reporting on it. But the laws of physics demand that we admit defeat. If we didn’t, we would ourselves become little Alberto Gonzaleses — denying the bracing truth of the world in which we live. Instead, the three of us will promptly begin drinking at our desks, hitting on our summer interns, and setting grease fires in the office kitchen. The Gonzo-Meter was a bust, but we want to really test that we’ve got job security like he’s got.
The timing was of particular significance. Slate understandably scrapped the project, but did so immediately after one-fifth of the Senate GOP caucus said it had no confidence in the AG, new revelations about the politicization of immigration judges, and another damaging document dump. A day later, we learned the Justice Department’s internal investigation of Gonzales was expanding to include new revelations.
Normally, that would make the Gonzo-Meter go up. But when it comes to Bush, norms are irrelevant.
I really liked the way Slate put this: “[W]e truly believed that the sun rose in the east and gravity worked.” It gets back to a point I raised a month ago about the way DC used to operate.
By late April, Gonzales’ resignation was a foregone conclusion. A Republican with close ties to the White House said Bush and Gonzales were “the only two people on the planet Earth who don’t see” the need for the AG to step down. The Senate hearing in which Gonzales was supposed to save his skin turned out to be a disaster.
But the Bush gang rejects political norms. Our political system is supposed to follow certain unwritten political “rules.” When a cabinet secretary screws up, creates a scandal, becomes a distraction, loses the nation’s confidence, and possibly engages in criminal behavior, he or she is supposed to resign. If a resignation isn’t offered, a president is supposed to ask for it.
But this president doesn’t concern himself with these “rules.” Donald Rumsfeld, Alphonso Jackson, and Rod Paige proved that the president is more than willing to tolerate cabinet secretaries staying on far too long.
Gonzales has become the most reviled man in the administration, after having been caught lying and losing control of the Justice Department. The rules say Gonzales has to go. Bush, meanwhile, is The Decider — and The Decider doesn’t much care about the rules.
A month 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 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.”
Just the way the president likes it.