One Hot Tamale in Mexico

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 15, 2007 7:58 AM

It reminded me of many of Bill Clinton's foreign trips.

The 42nd president would visit heads of state around the world, and at the inevitable joint news conference, when he wanted to talk about geopolitics, reporters would pepper him with questions about Whitewater or fundraising or Paula or Monica or some other scandal back home.

The 43rd president had that experience in Mexico yesterday. Standing with the country's new leader, Felipe Calderon, anxious to talk up his week in Latin America, Bush found himself having to defend Alberto Gonzales and the firing of a bunch of U.S. attorneys.

His bottom line: MWM.

"Mistakes were made. And I'm frankly not happy about them."

Ah, exactly who made the mistakes, Mr. President?

It's no coincidence that Gonzales also used that Reagan-era formulation.

But the MWM line, as Bush explained it, applied to how Justice explained the firings to the Hill. (Meaning, it looks on the surface to have been quite misleading.) The dismissals themselves were appropriate, in Bush's view (even if one prosecutor was dumped to make room for a former Karl Rove deputy and RNC oppo researcher).

It's interesting that Bush says he passed on to Gonzales (who can't quite remember the conversation) complaints from Republicans on the Hill about local prosecutors (but didn't mention any names).

Some would argue that it's perfectly all right to consider politics in naming political appointees (though pressing prosecutors about pending investigations--as Pete Domenici and Heather Wilson did--should be absolutely off-limits). It's not perfectly all right, though, to taint people's reputations by saying their dismissals were performance-related if the problem is that they weren't being aggressive enough in investigating Democrats.

But remember: MWM.

The larger problem for Gonzales, who hit the morning shows yesterday, is that he's now being depicted as the Justice Department's Michael Brown, barely aware of what's going on in his department. If it was all the fault of now-resigned deputy Kyle Sampson, where was the AG?

Perhaps the day's most significant development was John Sununu--a certified Republican--calling on Gonazales to hit the road.

"President Bush said today he is 'not happy' about how the Justice Department handled the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys last year, and said Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales has 'got some work up there' in better explaining the events to Congress," the L.A. Times reports.

The details can be eye-glazing, but Anonymous Liberal highlights this bit of correspondence:

"One email exchange in particular is quite damning. It took place in late December--less than a month before Gonzales' testimony--between Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, and Christopher Oprison of the White House Counsel's office. In the exchange, Oprison asks Sampson about the Attorney General's strategy for installing Tim Griffin, a protege of Karl Rove, as the new U.S. Attorney in Arkansas. Oprison notes that Griffin's appointment is encountering resistance from Arkansas' Senate delegation but wonders why, in light of Section 546 [of the Patriot Act], Griffin is being referred to as the 'interim' U.S. Attorney:

" If this is a Section 546 AG appointment for unlimited duration, Tim [Griffin] can call himself 'US Attorney' rather than 'interim' or 'acting' and our talkers should avoid referring to him as 'interim.' What are your thoughts ?

Sampson's response perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong with how the Bush administration operates. He writes:

" I think we should gum this to death: ask the Senators to give Tim a chance, meet with him, give him some time in office to see how he performs, etc. If they ultimately say 'no never' (and the longer we can forestall that the better), then we can tell them we'll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in 'good faith,' of course.

"Translation: we're going to invoke Section 546 and make Tim Griffin the U.S. Attorney, but we're not going to tell anyone that's what we're doing."

The editorialists at the Wall Street Journal make the case that Hillary is well familiar with the issue of U.S. attorneys, since her husband fired all 93 upon taking office:

"As for some of the other fired Attorneys, at least one of their dismissals seemed to owe to differences with the Administration about the death penalty, another to questions about the Attorney's managerial skills. Not surprisingly, the dismissed Attorneys are insisting their dismissals were unfair, and perhaps in some cases they were. It would not be the first time in history that a dismissed employee did not take kindly to his firing, nor would it be the first in which an employer sacked the wrong person.

"No question, the Justice Department and White House have botched the handling of this issue from start to finish. But what we don't have here is any serious evidence that the Administration has acted improperly or to protect some of its friends. If Democrats want to understand what a real abuse of power looks like, they can always ask the junior Senator from New York."

I find the latter argument beneath the Journal's usual standards. Every incoming president of a different party replaces the top federal prosecutors. An incumbent president can certainly replace U.S. attorneys as well, but dumping eight at once is a bit unusual.

HuffPoster Marty Kaplan is shocked and appalled and dreaming of impeachment:

"Fresh from his Nixonian press conference at the Justice Department, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has now taken his passive-exculpatory 'mistakes were made' show on the road -- the media road. I caught his act on MSNBC, where anchor Alex Witt's follow-up to Gonzales' opening lie was, 'How does this differ from President Clinton's mass dismissal of US Attorneys?' -- a journalistically bizarre attempt to elicit a White House talking point whose message (US Attorneys are political appointees) is in blithe contradiction with another White House talking point (these firings weren't political, they're merit-based).

"I also saw Gonzales interviewed on CNN, where anchor-bobble Tony Harris wrapped by telling viewers that 'no one's been accused of criminality,' conveniently ignoring charges that Gonzales lied under oath to Congress, or that New Mexico Republicans Pete Domenici and Heather Wilson obstructed justice by pressuring US Attorney David Iglesias to trump up a pre-election indictment of a Democrat.

"Sooner or later, it will all come out -- not only this Gonzales/Rove/Miers sewer, but all the other depredations visited on us by the Bush Administration."

This just in, from a NYT sitdown:

"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a 'remaining military as well as political mission' in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced but significant military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military."

The left, already suspicious of her non-apology on the war, will not be happy.

And here's the Bill Factor again:

"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, pledging to stand by the first responders who loyally defend their communities, reminded firefighters yesterday of something her supporters hope voters will forget: she knows something about loyalty from the tests of her marriage.

"'I'm a little experienced in staying the course, and sticking with people who stick with me,' said Clinton, drawing applause and knowing chuckles from a ballroom filled with enthusiastic members of the International Association of Firefighters," reports the Boston Globe.

This is kinda juicy, from Hotline:

"In his upcoming memoir, Dem strategist Bob Shrum suggests John Edwards 'was skeptical about voting for the Iraq war resolution and was pushed into it' for political reasons. Shrum writes that he regrets advising Edwards to vote for that war, and 'said if Edwards had followed his instincts... he would have been a stronger' WH candidate in '04. Shrum's book, 'No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner' due out in June, 'provides an account of Edwards' private discussions leading up' to the Iraq vote. Shrum writes that Edwards 'called his foreign policy and political advisers together' in his DC living room in the fall of '02 to get their advice. According to Shrum, Edwards was 'skeptical, even exercised' about the idea of voting yes and Elizabeth Edwards 'was forcefully against it.' "

You mean he acted like . . . a politician?

Andrew Sullivan, who's understandably upset about Joint Chiefs chairman Peter Pace declaring homosexuality immoral, isn't pleased by the Democratic front-runner, either:

"Senator Clinton is asked directly what her view is on the matter by Jake Tapper. Is homosexuality immoral, he asks her. Her response:

" Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude. I'm very proud of the gays and lesbians I know who perform work that is essential to our country, who want to serve their country and I want to make sure they can.

"The woman who addressed the Human Rights Campaign and will receive as much money as they can funnel to her, won't say whether she believes homosexuality is moral or not. One word: pathetic. But how predictable."

Well, we sort of knew that liberal bloggers had dynamited the Fox presidential debate, but the Politico nails it down:

"In a 20-minute conference call, a group of bloggers told Reid an uprising was brewing over the decision by the Nevada State Democratic Party to partner with Fox for the August debate in Reno. Among the bloggers, some were national -- Matt Stoller of MyDD, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of DailyKos -- and some were local -- Hugh Jackson of the Las Vegas Gleaner.

"In the call, Reid explained that he had been focused on the Iraq war debate the past few weeks and didn't seem to have closely followed the controversy over the Fox sponsorship. (When the debate was announced last month, Reid called it 'great news for Nevada' and declared himself 'happy.')

"Stoller said the bloggers told Reid that the issue was spoiling his popularity with the party's Netroots: his DailyKos straw poll approval rating, they told him, had gone from the mid-80s to around 40 percent recently.

"Reid backed off of his support of the debate, contending that he had had nothing to do with the decision, adding, 'I don't like Fox News.'"

Finally, Slate's Jack Shafer has been rethinking his past criticism of Patrick Fitzgerald:

The popular image painted of Fitzgerald by the press (again, I'm one of the painters) is that he used subpoenas and threats of subpoenas to extract the leaker's identity from reporters. The Los Angeles Times' Tim Rutten expresses that view in a recent column that belittles Fitzgerald. Rutten writes that Fitzgerald didn't break the case with a 'meticulous FBI investigation' or 'brilliant courtroom interrogation.' Fitzgerald 'simply dragged the journalists who had written or reported on the Plame affair before a federal grand jury and threatened them with jail unless they revealed their sources of information.'

"That's not exactly true. Fitzgerald and the FBI had made serious headway in the case long before he subpoenaed journalists. Not until May 2004 did he call the first journalists, Russert and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper, to testify. Far from dragging all the reporters before the grand jury to spill the beans on their sources, Fitzgerald strove to reach what everybody--except journalists--might now call reasonable middle ground to collect the truth about the alleged crime. He took testimony from Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler, a deposition from subpoenaed Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, and a deposition from Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. How intrusive was Woodward's interrogation? Woodward, who got releases from his sources, said on Larry King Live, 'I was able to answer every question.'

"Fitzgerald subpoenaed Judith Miller in August 2004 because he needed to prove that Libby had spoken to Miller about Plame weeks before his alleged conversation about Plame with Russert. (She fought the subpoena to the legal end and ultimately spent time in jail before accepting Libby's 'waiver.') Cooper agreed to give a deposition about his Libby contacts--after which Fitzgerald famously demanded more information from Cooper with another subpoena.

"I won't defend any of these subpoenas, but if it's motives and methods we're talking about, it now seems clear that Fitzgerald used that big club solely to prove Libby's justice-obstructing lies. Those lies gave him good reason to believe the scandal might extend up the chain of command to the vice president. If Libby was lying about Russert, was he lying about Cheney's role?

"To put a finer point on it, was Libby consciously using the press as a shield, thinking no prosecutor would dare rile reporters by using subpoena power to puncture his lies? If Libby used the press consciously, he gives every reporter a paradox to consider: If journalists are in the business of finding and printing the truth, how tolerant should we be of liars, especially liars whose lies bring subpoenas down on the press?"

Now that is a tricky question: What do you do when you've promised someone anonymity and they start fibbing about having been your source?