Falling on his sword

Can we say something about Gonzales here? Specifically, that
that Gonzales is still doing his real job - no, not AG; Bush loyalist. That's what he was hired for, and his very first lie was when he told his Senate confirmation hearing:

With the consent of the Senate, I will no longer represent only the White House; I will represent the United States of America and its people.

I understand the differences between the two roles.

In the former, I have been privileged to advise the president and his staff; in the latter, I would have a far broader responsibility: to pursue justice for all the people of our great nation, to see that the laws are enforced in a fair and impartial manner for all Americans.

And that was in his opening statement!

Dan Froomkin points out:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took another massive blow to his reputation yesterday, but he also continued doing the White House an enormous service.

As long as Gonzales remains front and center in the furor over last year's mass firing of U.S. attorneys -- as long as his goofy stonewalling continues to distract attention from all the elements of the purge that point so incriminatingly toward the White House -- he simply enhances his position as the ultimate "loyal Bushie."

...Gonzales didn't add fuel to the fire, either. It was a classic stalling maneuver. Gonzales was entirely unable to explain to anyone's satisfaction why those U.S. attorneys were fired -- although he comically insisted that he was sure he had made the decision himself, and that it was the right one.

It's no surprise, therefore, that President Bush expressed delight over Gonzales's testimony -- even as some White House aides privately told CNN that he hadn't helped himself at all.

"President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General's testimony today," the White House announced last night. And this morning on CNN, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino was in full spin mode, trying to make the argument that the hearing "proved, once again, that there is no credible allegation of anything improper happening or any wrongdoing."

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo has been making the same point for a while. So have some others, like the NYT editorial board, who write today:

Some of his answers were merely laughable. Mr. Gonzales said one prosecutor deserved to be fired because he wrote a letter that annoyed the deputy attorney general. Another prosecutor had the gall to ask Mr. Gonzales to reconsider a decision to seek the death penalty. (Mr. Gonzales, of course, is famous for never reconsidering a death penalty case, no matter how powerful the arguments are.)

Mr. Gonzales criticized other fired prosecutors for “poor management,” for losing the confidence of career prosecutors and for “not having total control of the office.” With those criticisms, Mr. Gonzales was really describing his own record: he has been a poor manager who has had no control over his department and has lost the confidence of his professional staff and all Americans.

... At the end of the day, we were left wondering why the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer would paint himself as a bumbling fool. Perhaps it’s because the alternative is that he is not telling the truth. There is strong evidence that this purge was directed from the White House, and that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s top political adviser, and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, were deeply involved.

... We don’t yet know whether Mr. Gonzales is merely so incompetent that he should be fired immediately, or whether he is covering something up.

But if we believe the testimony that neither he nor any other senior Justice Department official was calling the shots on the purge, then the public needs to know who was. That is why the Judiciary Committee must stick to its insistence that Mr. Rove, Ms. Miers and other White House officials testify in public and under oath and that all documents be turned over to Congress, including e-mail messages by Mr. Rove that the Republican Party has yet to produce.

Gonzales is not a bumbling apparatchik, to use the NYT's term. He's not incompetent. He's a lot of things, but "a bumbling fool" isn't one of them.

Gonzales is now what he has always been: George W Bush's loyal sidekick. In this scandal he is a distraction. He's the guy getting shot while the rest of the team escapes.

C'mon: let's not fall for it this time.