Alberto Gone-zales?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 16, 2007 7:46 AM

Could George Bush's Texas pal really lose his job?

As the tale of the purged prosecutors has gathered steam, and Alberto Gonzales has had all these TV interviewers ask whether he's quitting, I've started to wonder whether he actually might be forced to clean out his desk--especially in light of the e-mails released last night. Now we know Gonzales was plotting to dump prosecutors while he was still in the White House.

This crowd doesn't do damage control very well, do they? Haven't they heard of getting all the bad stuff out in one news cycle?

On the surface, the fiasco of the eight fired U.S. attorneys--as disturbing as it is, as much as it raises questions about the Justice Department's credibility, and as badly as it was botched--doesn't seem like a career-ender. It's great fodder for the Democrats, and especially the '08 contenders, to call for Gonzales's head. But I don't have the sense that people are standing around the water cooler arguing over whether Carol Lam and David Iglesias should have been let go. And besides, Gonzales faces a jury of one: GWB. And the president has given no indication that he'll cut his friend loose.

Of course, Bush also said Don Rumsfeld was going to serve till the end of his term.

But here's why Gonzales has a problem that stretches beyond the particulars of Purgegate. Especially in light of the FBI overstepping its bounds on surveillance, the AG looks like the latest in a line of Bush cronies who isn't on top of what's happening in his department. He fits into the Brownie narrative. His chief of staff was deeply involved in targeting the prosecutors and justifying their dismissal, as a stack of e-mails makes clear, and Gonzales knew nothing about it? That argument might help get him off the hook for assuring Congress that no politics was involved, but it doesn't make him look like a hands-on executive.

From the NYT:

"The White House senior adviser Karl Rove inquired about firing federal prosecutors in January 2005, prompting a Justice Department aide to respond that Alberto R. Gonzales, soon to be confirmed as attorney general, favored replacing a group of 'underperforming' United States attorneys, according to e-mail messages released Thursday.

"The e-mail messages, part of a larger collection that the Justice Department is preparing to turn over to Congressional investigators, indicate that Mr. Rove and Mr. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, had considered the proposal to replace prosecutors earlier than either has previously acknowledged . . .

"In a message on Jan. 6, 2005, Colin Newman, a White House lawyer, wrote to David G. Leitch, another lawyer in his office: 'Karl Rove stopped by to ask you (roughly quoting) 'how we planned to proceed regarding U.S. Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them or selectively replace them, etc.' ' "

"D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned this week as chief of staff to Mr. Gonzales, responded by e-mail three days later. Discussing a plan to replace 15 percent to 20 percent of all 93 prosecutors, Mr. Sampson noted: 'Judge and I discussed briefly a couple of weeks ago.' "

The judge has problems. What's really telling is that most Republicans aren't rushing to the barricades on Alberto's behalf. In fact, it now seems like National Review would be perfectly happy to send him into early retirement:

"The Gonzales Justice Department managed to mishandle the firings into a scandal. At one point, the department said that the U.S. attorneys had been removed for 'performance-related reasons.' Most of the fired prosecutors understandably considered this a smear and were outraged. Both Gonzales and his top aides have now offered serial justifications of the firings, and have said misleading things about who ordered them. Gonzales says he wasn't aware of his just-resigned chief of staff's coordination with the White House concerning the U.S. attorneys -- a highly embarrassing line of defense.

"This episode coincides with an internal audit's revelation that the FBI has misused national-security letters, a kind of subpoena the FBI can issue without the approval of a judge or prosecutor. This second controversy, along with the U.S.-attorney fiasco, has fueled calls for Gonzales's resignation and sparked demands that the executive branch's authority be circumscribed. If forced to choose, we'd much prefer the former. The administration's supporters should consider whether the price of keeping Gonzales in office will be the surrender of important policies in order to try to appease his critics . . .

"Next will be an assault on the Patriot Act, thanks to the FBI's inexcusable bungling of the national-security letters...

"Although these fumbles don't rise to the level of a firing offense, Alberto Gonzales could yet become a liability on matters more important than he is."

Josh Marshall, citing the testimony of Gonzales and Deputy AG Paul McNulty, is ready to start an office pool on the attorney general's tenure:

"By common sense standards it's clear that neither man testified truthfully when they answered senators' questions earlier this year. Even the emails now public make that clear. That visible deceit in covering up an emerging scandal will be too much for them to stay in office. Sen. Sununu's (R-NH) announcement will be followed by others.

"Who wants to guess how many days remain before Gonzales decides his presence at Justice is becoming an obstacle to the fulfillment of President Bush's important law enforcement policy objectives?"

Philly Inquirer blogger Dick Polman sees some tea leaves that don't bode well for Gonzales hanging on:

"Certain anonymous remarks floated in The New York Times strongly suggest that the folks at the top are fitting their loyal subordinate for the noose. (Folks at the top routinely assail newspapers for running anonymous quotes, when those quotes prove embarrassing. But they have no problem with such quotes if they are the ones using anonymity to serve their own needs.)

"Here's the key passage: '(Gonzales' press conference) underscored what two Republicans close to the Bush administration described as a growing rift between the White House and the attorney general . . . The two Republicans, who spoke anonymously so they could share private conversations with senior White House officials, said top aides to Mr. Bush, including Fred F. Fielding, the new White House counsel, were concerned that the controversy had so damaged Mr. Gonzales's credibility that he would be unable to advance the White House agenda on national security matters, including terrorism prosecutions. 'I really think there's a serious estrangement between the White House and Alberto now,' one of the Republicans said.'

"So the White House seems to be telling Gonzales that his usefulness is over and that it's time to fall on his sword for the throne. The problem, however, is that Congress -- which is well aware that the prosecutor scandal is rooted in the Bush administration's governing philosophy -- will not be content with a partial shuffling of personnel. A modified, limited hangout route might have worked when the supine Republicans ran the Hill, but those days are over."

What about . . . impeachment? The Nation's John Nichols gets excited in making the case:

"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says he is not going anywhere.

"Never mind that he is caught up in the biggest scandal involving a sitting Attorney General since the sordid days of the 1920s.

"Never mind that the scandal that plagues Gonzales involves the same sort of concerns about the politicization of the Department of Justice and the federal bureaucracy that ultimately forced Richard Nixon from office in the 1970s.

"Never mind that even Republicans are saying the firing of U.S. attorneys who would not agree to launch pre-election prosecutions of Democrats has created 'a crisis with the Justice Department'--to borrow a phrase from conservative Nevada Senator John Ensign--while Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are beginning to echo the assessment of New York Senator Charles Schumer, who says that Gonzales has engaged in an 'unprecedented breach of trust and abuse of power' . . .

"If Gonzales refuses to do the honorable thing and resign of his own accord, and if Bush refuses to cause his appointee to surrender control of the Department of Justice, Congress is fully empowered to force the hand of the attorney general."

What's fueling this red-hot scandal? It's all about the Democrats, says Roger Simon:

"It's a fiasco that could not have happened four months ago. The furor over the replacement of eight federal prosecutors reveals how radically the Republican wipeout in November, coupled with a looming presidential election, have transformed Washington politics.

"Three new dynamics have given the scandal its punch and foreshadow a brutal political season: Democratic presidential candidates eager to confront the administration; congressional Democrats whose requests are now demands; and GOP presidential hopefuls reluctant to associate with -- much less defend -- a wounded president . . .

"Gonzales, who a week earlier had brushed off the brouhaha over the prosecutors as 'an overblown personnel matter,' was making the rounds of network and cable news shows in an effort to save his job."

At Power Line, Paul Mirengoff insists this is a "non-scandal":

"The Post is also raising questions about the Attorney General's failure to know enough about what was going to provide good information to Congress on the subject. This is a legitimate criticism. Gonzales should have been in the loop on any decision-making about firing U.S. Attorneys. But while I'm no big fan of Gonzales, Post columnist Ruth Marcus goes too far in arguing that Gonzales should lose his job over this. Based on what we know so far, the decisions made by the aide to whom Gonzales delegated the task were reasonable ones, so I don't see how Gonzales can be fired on that basis. As for not getting good information to Congress, Gonzales says his aide didn't provide complete information. If that's true, the aide should be removed (and has been), not Gonzales."

The Democrats' tepid response to Peter Pace's lecture on the immorality of homosexuality is riling up some liberal critics, among them the New Republic's Jason Zengerle, who says Barack Obama is "pandering to bigots. Newsday caught up with the Illinois Senator yesterday and asked him, in light of Peter Pace's recent comments, whether he thought gays and lesbians were immoral. Here's how Obama responded:

" Answer 1: 'I think traditionally the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman has restricted his public comments to military matters. That's probably a good tradition to follow.'

"Answer 2: 'I think the question here is whether somebody is willing to sacrifice for their country, should they be able to if they're doing all the things that should be done.'

"Answer 3: Signed autograph, posed for snapshot, jumped athletically into town car.

"I hope Obama takes a fourth stab at answering the question. If he does, a simple 'no' will suffice."

At Americablog, John Aravosis is just plain mad:

"What the hell is up with Obama? This is the first major flub I've seen from Obama in this campaign, and it's a doozy. Some of the shine just got knocked off that golden boy.

"As for Hillary, this is not good. Many in the gay community love her, while many fear that while she generally talks a good talk, she won't be there for us when we need her. This kind of vacillation and avoidance only feeds those fears."

The party's antiwar left also sees vacillation on Iraq, but American Prospect's Michael Tomasky argues that there's a valid mathematical reason:

"The number is 62, and it's the number of House Democrats who represent districts that George W. Bush carried in 2004. I have a map up on my screen as I write showing the districts in question -- districts, of course, on which the Democrats' House majority depends. In Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah, and Colorado; Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, both Dakotas, and Michigan; all 11 states of the Confederacy; California, Oregon, and Washington; Ohio and Kentucky and West Virginia and Pennsylvania and even New Hampshire and New York, Democrats are sitting in red districts -- where they won, in many cases, narrow victories.

"By way of contrast, how many House Republicans represent districts that John Kerry won in 2004? All of eight. You don't have to be Charlie Cook to understand the problem this presents."

On the Rudy Watch, the New York Sun's Ryan Sager is the first I've seen to suggest that his third wife, Judith Nathan, might be a liability after he watched her in action:

"The campaign might want to be more careful with how she frames her remarks.

"Here, she starts off by saying, 'I wanted to tell you all a little bit about how Rudy and I came to be our team together.' The problem with this is that we all know their relationship began as an affair, while he was still married -- be it in a publicly 'distant' (that's how the press likes to put it) marriage. She then goes on to describe some of their early flirtations.

"I don't think I was the only one at this point thinking: Ick.

"The former Ms. Nathan is, after all, describing the beginning of an affair that would lead to an ugly and painful divorce that still is affecting the former mayor's relationship with his children.

"Later in her brief remarks, Mrs. Giuliani describes how being married to the former mayor makes it easier for her to raise money for her chosen causes. 'You can then pick up the phone as Judith Giuliani,' she said, and speak to people with deep pockets 'who might not normally take my telephone calls.'

"Again: Ick."

This got squeezed out of my column yesterday, but conservative author Bruce Bartlett has some thoughts on media bias that will be anathema to many on the right:

"In my view, the media did have a strong left-wing tilt for many years. But over the last 20 years or so, I think that has mostly disappeared. Major newspapers like The Post and New York Times are now fairly evenhanded in their news coverage. Their editorial pages are still pretty liberal, of course, but the Post in particular is far less liberal in its editorial positions than it was in the 1970s.

"If, as I believe, the major media tilted left and have moved toward the center, then this means they moved to the right. It is this movement that the left has picked up on and is complaining about. But the idea that the media now tilt toward conservatives is absurd. However, I do think that in some ways conservatives have become better at using the media, taking advantage of its institutional biases to spin stories in conservative directions. Contrary to what the left thinks, this is not something nefarious, but simply the application of good public-relations skills."

Rahm Emanuel has some advice for his freshman Dems: Avoid Stephen Colbert.

Finally, my story on gossip giant TMZ.com prompted this catchup piece in the LAT:

"Sometimes called 'Hollywood for ugly people,' Washington usually rewards policy wonks. Think earmarks, fine print, protocols. 'Washington is where the term 'celebrity' includes former surgeons general, defense lawyers and Pat Buchanan,' said Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Lakewood), whose status as a prominent bachelorette and stand-up comedian might make her a target for TMZ's gossip hounds. 'TMZ is going to be bored out of its mind. The only thing keeping TMZ in D.C. for more than a week would be its lease.' "

Well, L.A. Times, maybe we're a little uglier because we don't all go around getting face lifts, tummy tucks and boob jobs.