I don’t want to alarm anyone, but it appears that the Attorney General has struggled to tell the truth for quite a while.
In each case, Gonzales has appeared to lawmakers to be shielding uncomfortable facts about the Bush administration’s conduct on sensitive matters. A series of misstatements and omissions has come to define his tenure at the helm of the Justice Department and is the central reason that lawmakers in both parties have been trying for months to push him out of his job.
Yet controversy over Gonzales’s candor about George W. Bush’s conduct or policies has actually dogged him for more than a decade, since he worked for Bush in Texas.
Whether Gonzales has deliberately told untruths or is merely hampered by his memory has been the subject of intense debate among members of Congress, legal scholars and others who have watched him over the years. Some regard his verbal difficulties as a strategic ploy on behalf of a president to whom he owes his career; others see a public official overwhelmed by the magnitude of his responsibilities.
That’s actually an interesting construction. Gonzales is either lying to protect his benefactor, or he’s in so far over his head, he’s lying because he can’t keep track of the truth. Yeah, that’s bound to inspire confidence in the nation’s top law-enforcement official.
The WaPo’s Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein go into a fair amount of detail, exploring the various explanations for why most of the things the Attorney General says turn out to be false. It could be his memory, or his incompetence, or maybe his lack of scruples, but the common thread to all of Gonzales’ deceptions is straightforward: he’s going to help George W. Bush, no matter what.
Democrats and some experts on the use of language say that Gonzales’s gaffes are too numerous and consistent to be chalked up to misunderstandings. In most instances, his answers, or his refusals to answer, have served to obscure events that would be damaging to the administration, Gonzales or Bush. […]
“He’s a slippery fellow, and I think so intentionally,” said Richard L. Schott, a professor at the University of Texas’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. “He’s trying to keep the president’s secrets and to be a team player, even if it means prevaricating or forgetting convenient things.”
“This almost subconscious bond of loyalty” between the attorney general and the president “may be driving a lot of this,” said Schott, who has studied relations between the executive and legislative branches of government and the role of psychology in political behavior. “It’s obvious that Gonzales owes Bush his career. Part of his behavior comes from this gratitude and extreme loyalty to Bush.”
I’ve seen items like this one pop up occasionally over the years, detailing the “extreme loyalty” Bush’s aides feel towards him, and I find it kind of creepy every time. I can appreciate that Gonzales owes his career to Bush, who at different times has named Gonzales the Texas Secretary of State, Texas Supreme Court Justice, White House counsel, and U.S. Attorney General. It’s bound to be the kind of help that inspires a sense of loyalty.
But a “subconscious bond” that leads the Attorney General to lie under oath? In a public hearing? Repeatedly?