When the Republicans in Congress and the Senate are pretty much done with him and frankly, all the "I do not recalls" from his testimony either made him to be a lying sack or - if you believed him - incompetent.
Well:
Well:
WASHINGTON --
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is trying to do something few have done: Outlive a Washington scandal. And he's trying to do it with little or no support from Republicans in Congress.
The White House, however, is backing him. President Bush has an admirable sense of loyalty to his top aides. But the administration's willingness to withstand its own party's disdain for Gonzales probably springs not from loyalty but from self-interest: The last thing the president needs right now is confirmation hearings for a new attorney general.
It's well known that the administration is seeking to maximize its own powers. This effort takes many forms, from asserting the right to bypass laws that Bush himself has signed, to asserting the authority to hold prisoners without trials, to forbidding Congress from seeing information the administration deems sensitive to national security, to asserting its own, highly debatable interpretations of the Geneva Conventions.
There may well be other, similar claims of power that the public does not know about, leading to secret actions that the president believes are justified through his authority as commander in chief.
Many such assertions of power have originated in the White House. Some have been traced to David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's former counsel and current chief of staff. But the key determinations of what the administration can and cannot do are made by the Justice Department, whose Office of Legal Counsel passes judgment on questions of presidential power.
At some key moments, Justice has tried to rein in the White House. For example, in ordering the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails from the United States to other countries, Bush asserted the right to bypass a law requiring warrants for such searches, as long as the Justice Department reauthorized that exemption every 45 days.
Once, when former attorney general John Ashcroft was in the hospital, his number two, former deputy attorney general James Comey, refused to sign off on a new round of spying; Bush's aides reportedly made a bedside plea to Ashcroft to keep the program going. He did not overrule Comey, though the program was renewed after a compromise to provide further protections of civil liberties.
Since so much depends on favorable rulings from Justice, the administration can't possibly look forward to having to justify its actions to a new team of lawyers. But that's almost certain to happen if Gonzales is replaced by someone outside Bush's inner circle. Bush would be very hard-pressed to get an inner-circle appointee confirmed by Democratic-controlled Senate. He or she would have had to withstand days of public grilling by Democratic senators, who would try to raise the curtain on any of the administration's secret programs.
More likely, Bush would be obliged to choose an attorney general with a reputation for independence, such as a former Republican senator with credibility on Capitol Hill. But such a figure would almost certainly be more skeptical of the administration's assertions of executive power than Gonzales, a close Bush associate from the president's Texas days.
Gonzales is hardly the first presidential crony to become attorney general. Presidents have often tried to keep the Justice Department in the family -- sometimes literally. John F. Kennedy appointed his brother to the post. Richard Nixon appointed his former law partner John Mitchell. Ronald Reagan appointed two successive cronies, William French Smith and Edwin Meese.
But with the Bush administration's popularity near a record low, and with the opposing party in charge on Capitol Hill, few senators are going to vote for another crony appointment. Republican senators' unwillingness to keep towing the administration's line was visible at last Thursday's testimony by Gonzales as the attorney general sought to explain inconsistencies in his account of the firings of eight US attorneys. Republican after Republican, including many diehard conservatives, heaped criticism on the attorney general.
Gonzales refused to resign, somewhat like former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during the Abu Ghraib scandal. But Rumsfeld faced a Republican majority, and most senators were deeply invested in the war on Iraq. Today, few senators want to defend the firings of US attorneys.
On Sunday, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, called Gonzales's testimony "very, very damaging to his own credibility."
Gonzales continues to tough it out. Bush appears to be counting on him, yet again.
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