The White House was “troubled,” according to one source, about
the reported actions — or inactions — of the Justice Department
last week as Republicans in Congress made a last ditch attempt to
rescue Terri Schiavo.
“You actually had Arlen Specter and his
Judiciary Committee out there trying to save this woman’s life, and
then you have Alberto Gonzales and his crew over
at Justice basically putting up roadblocks,” says a White House
staffer. “This was not a good way for Gonzales to start his tenure
there.”
Gonzales has been on the job at Justice for a little over two
months now, and the congressional attempts to restore the feeding
tube to Schiavo was the new AG’s first high-profile foray into the
politics that swirl around the Justice Department.
By most accounts, Gonzales and his team fared poorly, at least
from Republican viewpoints. “Instead of trying to work with us, all
we got were no’s and roadblocks, with little guidance on what we
could do and could not do,” says a House leadership staffer who
spoke often with the Justice Department’s Legislative Affairs
office. “They weren’t being helpful, and they sure weren’t doing
the White House any favors.”
Ultimately, both the House and the Senate passed — and
President Bush signed — legislation designed to give Schiavo’s
parents their best shot at having a federal court overrule the
rulings of Florida state courts. Those federal filings ultimately
failed.
Before the legislation, the Senate Judiciary Committee — with
Specter’s approval — and House Republicans attempted to subpoena
Terri Schiavo, a political maneuver that won plaudits from a number
of conservative groups around the country, but which received a
thumbs-down the Department of Justice. “The Justice Department
pushed us hard to withdraw the subpoena idea,” says the House
staffer. “We told them that the White House knew about this, and
that they tacitly approved. It didn’t seem to matter to DOJ.
Gonzales and his folks just made things harder for us.”
“If the White House was hoping that Gonzales might be able to
burnish his image for conservatives leading up to a Supreme Court
nomination, the Schiavo case tarnished it pretty badly,” says a
staffer for a Senator who was pushing hard for the subpoena
solution. “I’ll say this, every conservative up here was wishing
[former Attorney General John]
Ashcroft was still there.”
To be fair to Gonzalez, Ashcroft’s presence at Justice probably
would not have made much difference. Ashcroft was excoriated by
conservatives on his leaving office for what they said were his
failures to press for tough stands against pornography, human
trafficking and abortion rights, while not pressing hard enough for
faith-based programs.
Another Senate staffer says her impression of the Justice
Department’s role in the Schiavo case is more benign. “They were
giving us straight legal analysis from the federal perspective,
nothing more, which is probably what has a lot of people up in
arms, and it was all behind the scenes. These folks wanted Gonzales
out front, making it appear this was an issue he cared about. That
didn’t happen,” says the staffer. “But I don’t think anyone can
dispute that the legal advice they gave us wasn’t sound. They just
didn’t help us get to where we wanted to be.”
And for failing to do that, many Republicans in the House and
the Senate say that Gonzales has failed the first litmus test on
the conservative scorecard.
