New blow to Bush as attorney general resigns

I don't have much time to post today, although I couldn't ignore the news that Alberto Gonzales has finally quit his post as US Attorney General. Supporters of Bush say that one of his faults is an excessive loyalty towards his staff, citing the holding on to Rumsfeld way past the point where he served the administration in any useful capacity. I have a slightly harsher view of this, and think that Bush is pigheaded and simply refuses to admit when the game is up.

Gonzales's recent performances in front of the Congressional committee were simply disgraceful lessons in obfuscation, and for the President to applaud this behaviour by stating that no-one had proven that Gonzales had actually committed a crime, was a low point even for this President.

What Bush was applauding was an Attorney General who claimed to have the memory loss of an Alzheimer's sufferer in a performance that even Republicans found unconvincing, leading them to call for his resignation.

Against this torrent of abuse, Bush hoped to hold firm and to continue to employ a liar and suspected perjurer as the country's top law officer.

Gonzales has finally given in to the inevitable, although he has made no statement that explains why he has, at this time, decided enough is enough.

What is clear though, as Gonzales's departure leaves Cheney the only original member of Bush's administration still standing, is how few people remain in the administration to defend Bush's unique interpretation of his powers as a war time President. This is an interpretation that many feel was crafted in the Vice President's office.

Indeed, many feel that it was Gonzales's attempt to defend an intellectual position that was not his own that aided his fall.

“He was not the intellectual father of those positions, but he shaped and articulated them at the White House, and he continued to take a very strong position on executive power as attorney general,” said Daniel Marcus, a professor of constitutional law at American University who was a top official at the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton.

It was Vice President Dick Cheney and his top legal adviser, David S. Addington, who, by most accounts, provided the intellectual framework for building up the power of an executive branch that they believed had been badly weakened by restrictions imposed after Vietnam and Watergate. They pushed for a radical rewriting of American policies on such critical issues as surveillance and detention of terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks, with virtually no oversight or input from Congress or the courts.

Now, Gonzales's resignation will do nothing to undermine the administration's determination to continue to assert that the President holds these unprecedented powers, but his fall hardly strengthens the President's position if only through the simple fact that one of the people who attempted to articulate the administration's argument has been forced to fall on his sword.

David R. Gergen, professor of public service at Harvard University and an adviser to Presidents Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan and Clinton, said Mr. Gonzales “will be remembered as riding shotgun with Dick Cheney on the expansion of presidential power.”

Mr. Gergen and other legal analysts and former government officials said Mr. Gonzales came to stand for the government-by-fiat approach adopted by the Bush White House after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Cheney survives in Washington because he is a political animal who well understands the ways of the Beltway. One always got the feeling that Gonzales was attempting to fit in with this crowd and that he did not fully share or truly understand their passions. This led him into trouble.

“You can’t just change government through strong-willed policy,” said Stanley Brand, an ethics lawyer in Washington and a former House Democratic counsel. “People who ride into Washington on a high horse of ideology or ignorance are inevitably headed toward a blow-up.”

With Gonzales it was a strange mixture of ignorance and someone else's ideology which led to his downfall.

Now, a severely weakened Bush must face the gruelling task of forcing through a successor. No doubt Bush will, as he always does, choose an ideologue uniquely unsuited for the position. Appointment to top positions simply to rile the opposition appears to be a trait of this administration, by which I'm thinking of the astonishing appointment of John Bolton to United Nations, so I do think we can expect more of the same.

However, there is no reason for the Democrats to play dead and allow Bush to make such an appointment by accusing them of endangering the country at a time of war or some such nonsense.

Yet another of Bush's appointments has proven himself to be spectacularly unsuited to the task that the President asked him to carry out.

The Commander in Chief has shown too many times that his judgment is fatally flawed and that he has a tendency to promote friends to top positions based solely on his closeness to them rather than any actual talent they may possess. I'm thinking specifically about his appointment of Michael D Brown - You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie - who brought all his skills and experience as the Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association to the oversight of FEMA with predictable consequences.

With the resignation of Bush's latest friend, appointments based on such friendships should now be rendered a thing of the past.

The Democrats must now carry out their constitutional duty, and ensure that the next person that Bush proposes is actually fit for the job.

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