Lance the boil, Mr. President. So says, in effect, a
knowledgeable U.S. senator who is usually friendly to the Bush
administration.
The boil is at the U.S. Department of Justice. The department
has become painfully dysfunctional.
One of the hardest things for a good leader to do is to relieve
from a position of power somebody who is not only a decent person
but a personal friend, somebody who has done nothing unethical, but
who just isn’t up to the task. Unfortunately, that is what needs to
be done in the case of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The AG’s
no better than fair-to-middling performance on other issues has now
been overshadowed by his execrable performance in the matter of the
eight U.S. attorneys recently replaced, and by his incredibly weak
performance (claiming a truly pathetic memory of even the most
objectively important meetings and conversations) in front of the
Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday.
The problem, says the senator to whom I spoke (who asked to
remain nameless, but allowed some of the comments to be quoted as
long as his name wasn’t used), is not that Gonzales is ill
intentioned or unintelligent, but that he just didn’t have the
requisite background for the job in the first place.
“He was asked to do something he didn’t know anything about. He
had never been in the Department of Justice and never had a real
history in dealing with Department of Justice issues and therefore
was unable to anticipate the minefields that are always out there.
The attorney general’s job is incredibly difficult. Every AG has
been constantly attacked and placed under stress.”
In such a “very difficult job,” said the senator, a long
familiarity with the challenges involved is essential.
That inexperience, suggested the senator, led directly to the
now-acknowledged foul-ups in the case of the U.S. attorneys: “The
U.S. Attorney thing would have been avoided if he had served in the
department, perhaps as a U.S. Attorney or Assistant U.S. Attorney.
I think he would have been less likely to have underestimated the
problems he was dealing with and the kind of push-backs that
occur.”
The senator stopped just short of a definite call for Gonzales
to step aside, but his considerations were highly practical.
First, he that if Gonzales stays in office while in a state of
weakness, there is this to consider: “One of the problems it would
appear he will have is attracting some top-flight people to run the
department with not many months left. That’s a tough call.”
Speaking of President George W. Bush’s options, the senator
said: “If he could confirm somebody good, and get that person
confirmed without too much delay, who really knew the Department of
Justice and who could help avoid some of these minefields, that
might be better.”
In other words, Bush should search for a replacement of
demonstrable competence that could run the highly difficult gamut
of the Senate Judiciary Committee — and should replace Gonzales
only if he can find such a person. The idea is not to replace
Gonzales for the sake of replacing him, but to do so in order to
set high standards, to be seen as fixing a weak spot, in such a way
that the Democrats would look petty (which they certainly are) if
they try to block the nominee.
The senator’s corollary was that if confirmation of such a
person seems too dicey, Gonzales probably ought to stay despite the
other considerations.
LEAVING THE SENATOR’S COMMENTS for now, it’s worth noting that the
experience of Supreme Court nominations John Roberts and Samuel
Alito shows that superior qualifications and intellect are very
difficult, politically, to oppose. Surely there are other Robertses
and Alitos out there.
Two names I’ve been floating quite obviously meet the senator’s
requirements (not that I ran the names by the senator; this is just
applying his logic to the situation at hand) and I would add
another that comes close to meeting those requirements while adding
other attractive qualifications. The first two are, first, former
Deputy AG Larry Thompson (for Bush until 2003), also a former U.S.
Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia under Ronald Reagan,
and second, current Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a
former federal appeals court judge and a legendary former federal
prosecutor and assistant AG.
Thompson is now a senior vice president of Pepsico. His
reputation is impeccable, and he would be difficult to block.
Chertoff might be raked over the coals a bit because of the
administration’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina. But most of
the blame for that has been correctly laid at the feet of former
FEMA Director Michael Brown, who failed to report through Chertoff
as he was supposed to do. Ordinarily it might not be a good idea to
switch the head of such an important department, because that would
merely set up yet another confirmation battle for that other
department — but in this case, it is thought that Bush’s in-house
homeland security advisor, Frances Fragos Townsend, could easily
step into Chertoff’s role and would be easily confirmed.
The third name I would add has no direct DoJ experience, but
makes up for it with a breadth of other applicable experience. He’s
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox (so he
does have experience heading a big agency with law enforcement
functions), a longtime congressional leader, widely respected, and
also a former senior associate counsel for President Ronald Reagan.
He’s brilliant, and while strongly conservative, he is seen as a
bipartisan straight shooter, a man of principle.
All three of these men would be clear improvements over the
well-meaning but overmatched — and now discredited — Gonzales.
Unfortunately, this president has a reputation for valuing loyalty
above competence. This is his chance to change that impression.
