Firing Alberto Gonzales II

But the really big story that the Democrats are trying to exploit in 2007 is of an imperial presidency that, in fact, is run by Karl Rove and other non-elected individuals, individuals who are unaccountable to Congress or anyone else except the Bush White House, and who are creating havoc at every turn in America. That is the really big issue, and the D's are trying desperately to show that this is, in fact happening. Or, better said, the D's want to create the convincing case in America's mind that the Administration of the United States has, like a good portion of the War in Iraq, been "privatized." The D's then are counting on voter outrage to such an extent that it will comfortably vault them into the White House in 2008. I think it actually is a pretty brilliant strategy and it is unfolding along their timetable pretty nicely.

They have found their issue and their means into the issue. The issue is the firing of eight US Attorneys in December 2006 (there are 94 of them, if memory serves me correctly). Recall, however, that this issue is only the "pretext" or the means by which the D's can get into the inner workings of an Administration which it feels has played fast and loose with civil liberties, truth, and a host of other things. The case they are trying to make, and will try to make with AG Gonzales next week, is that the Administration, at the highest levels, was "playing politics" with justice and law by firing people based not on competence but on hewing to a political agenda of the Administration. If there is one thing on which America prides itself it is that law ought not simply to be a reflection of the political process. Law has an inner integrity of its own, based on rules of evidence, due process, constitutional protections, precedent and public access to legal reasoning and decisions. If the hearings next week can show that the most important legal process affected by the Administration--the work of the US attorneys--is at base a process of perceived loyalty to the Administration, and if it can show that Gonzales was untruthful in communicating to Congress his role in the termination of the gang of eight in December, then the AG will probably have to go. But D's should probably hope that he stays on; he would be a symbol of an Administration that is not simply flawed but deeply corrupt.

The Latest Flap--over Emails

A news story from today added an interesting twist to the case the D's want to make regarding the imperial presidency of GW Bush--that at least 22 White House staffers had email accounts set up by the Republican National Committee and that they may have conducted confidential or important Government business via these emails so as to avoid legal requirements regarding preservation and potential disclosure of presidential records. This doesn't directly, at this point, relate to the firings of the US Attorneys, but that issue has given Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and others "cover" to pursue other ways in which the Adminsitration has acted badly. The existence of private email accounts, and the contention that the emails sent over these servers are now inaccessible, gives the further impression that this Administration either despises or wants to ignore Congress and the constitutionally-required checks and balances in order to pursue its own agenda. This issue will receive some play, I think, as the D's continue to hammer away incessantly at what the White House might be "hiding" from Congress and the American people.

We are in our current mess for two reasons: first, the country in general, and Congress in particular, ceded a lot of its oversight authority to the President because of the 9/11 attacks. The President was given a blank check to try to respond to those attacks in whatever way he saw fit. This delegation of power to the President was motivated by fear and our lack of knowledge of the kind of threat we faced. The President, as I have argued in several essays over the past few years, has not treated the delegation of power respectfully or wisely. He has used it as a sort of permission slip to do whatever he pleased, and then backfill with explanation of "executive privilege" or the President's "inherent powers." The second problem is that we had a Republican-controlled Congress for the first six years of the Bush Administration, a Congress which refused to initiate any hearings, probes or other investigatory panels that might have eventuated in embarrassment for the President. Thus, we have about six years of pent-up Democratic frustration, a frustration that now seems to be increasingly shared by the American people.

Conclusion

So, we will probably be treated to some pretty interesting political theater in the next few weeks, if not months. Remember, however, that the "bottom line" in all of this is not the head of Alberto Gonzales on a platter or even showing the incompetence or lying of the Bush Administration on several occasions. The bottom line is creating a case in our minds for the domestic as well as international disaster of the Bush Adminstration. So far, the Democratic strategy seems to be working. And, one last thing. If President Bush were really smart, he would have dumped Gonzales just when this flap was brewing. The attorney firings issue would have quickly cooled off and the D's would have had to search for another issue to expose the Administration's "evil." So, GW Bush, never really the smartest student in class, has continued to confirm his lack of political and intellectual skills.

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