John Ashcroft’s resignation was expected, so Alberto Gonzales’ nomination has been in the works for some time. Of course, if Gonzales becomes attorney general, who’ll take his place as chief White House counsel? There appears to be a frontrunner for that job, too.
Several Republicans said no decision had been made on filling Mr. Gonzales’s position as White House counsel, although Brett M. Kavanaugh, a former associate counsel who has since been promoted to staff secretary to the president, is a strong candidate. Two officials said Mr. Kavanaugh had won Mr. Bush’s confidence. “The president thinks he’s great,” said one Republican familiar with the White House operations. “He trusts him and really likes having him around to rely on.”
I don’t expect Bush to reach out to the ACLU for Gonzales’ replacement, but if Kavanaugh is named White House counsel, it’d be the latest move to suggest that the talk about working cooperatively with Dems in the future is empty rhetoric.
Kavanaugh is hardly a household name, but most households have seen his handiwork. It was Kavanaugh, for example, who was a key member of Ken Starr’s impeachment team. Indeed, Kavanaugh personally wrote the portion of the Starr report that outlined Starr’s reasons for Congress to impeach Clinton in 1998. As Roll Call reported way back in April:
From Starr to Monica Lewinsky to Manuel Miranda — the former GOP staffer at the center of the improperly accessed Democratic memos — Kavanaugh has connections directly or indirectly to a host of scandal figures who have irked Democrats in recent years.
[…]
While in the counsel’s office Kavanaugh was also at the center of a few other decisions, including one to restrict access to presidential documents traditionally released after 12 years. Democratic staff said this was a bit of legal irony since, while working for Starr, Kavanaugh spent a lot of time and effort trying to unseal documents on which the Clinton administration claimed executive privilege.
His connections to Starr are an obvious source of anguish for Democrats. “Having been Ken Starr’s right-hand man, he comes in raising a lot of questions on our side,” [Illinois Sen. Dick] Durbin said.
A lot of Dem angst over Kavanaugh came out in the spring when Bush nominated the young Republican activist to a lifetime position on the U.S. Circuit Judge for the DC Circuit, despite the fact that he has no judicial experience, a fairly limited legal background outside partisan political work (he has never even participated in a trial), and at 38, would have been one of the youngest judges in the history of the DC Circuit. Not surprisingly, Kavanaugh was one of a handful of would-be judges to get blocked by Senate Dems.
But the Senate has no say in who the president chooses to be White House counsel. If Bush wants Kavanaugh, the job will be his, whether it angers congressional Dems or not.