Gonzales Is Defended As Suitable for Court

As Bush's White House counsel, Gonzales again clashed with conservatives over the administration's approach to affirmative action. When the use of race in admissions at the University of Michigan came before the Supreme Court in 2003, then-Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson wanted to confront affirmative action programs head on. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, argued for the softer position the administration ultimately took, which objected only to the way in which Michigan had pursued its diversity goals.

But Olson said in an interview that he does not know to what extent Gonzales influenced or merely shared the president's views.

More generally, conservatives say, Gonzales simply has not been out on the front lines loudly sharing his views on questions of judicial philosophy.

"Al Gonzales has never said or written anything to indicate that he has pronounced conservative convictions -- it's been a symphony of silence," said Bruce Fein, a conservative legal scholar who served in the Justice Department during the Reagan administration.

After the first Supreme Court vacancy, the ferocity of such criticism surprised many Justice Department aides and others who had worked with Gonzales, who worried it would damage his effectiveness as attorney general, according to interviews with those involved. But this time they are fighting back. While aides to Gonzales declined to comment, citing the sensitivity surrounding the Supreme Court selection process, surrogates were more than glad to.

Brad Berenson, an associate White House counsel from 2001 to 2003, said that "a lot of the objections are based on fear and doubt rather than facts and data."

"The conservatives who know Judge Gonzales the best are, to a person, strong supporters of his," Berenson said. The conservatives who know him the least are the ones in opposition. That should tell you something."

Gonzales supporters say skeptics should look at the judges he has vetted and helped onto the bench, many of them darlings of the conservative movement, including Roberts. They also note that at Gonzales's urging the American Bar Association has been excluded from the judicial selection process. (Many conservatives believe the ABA is liberally biased.) And as attorney general, Gonzales steered a rightward course set by his predecessor, John D. Ashcroft, on issues ranging from terrorism to pornography, his backers argue.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who said his kind words for Gonzales earlier this week prompted a slew of angry phone calls, asserted that the arguments against the attorney general "just don't hold water."

But Kay Daly, president of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, does not want to take a chance -- and believes that in the end Bush will not either. "We expect President Bush to keep his promise" to appoint a conservative justice in the mold of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, she said, "and there are others who fit that mold more closely."