Embattled Attorney Justice Alberto Gonzales is resigning. That's the word this Monday morning from Washington.
A long-time ally of President Bush from his days in Texas, Gonzales revealed himself as a political operator in Washington. His tenure at the Department of Justice was marked by a series of missteps and scandals, including a controversial warrantless wiretapping program and the apparently political firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
As regular AT readers will know, we have criticized the AG for many months now. In our view, Gonzales was one of the president's least effective and most polarizing cabinet members, more interested in promoting a Republican political agenda than serving the American public.
9 comments:
Another Bush flunky bites the dust. His replacement has to be another trusted flunky like Chertoff.
I have been aggravated by Bush's habit of picking cronies for important positions, Gonzales among them. And I would readily admit that there are too many people who are "more interested in promoting a Republican political agenda than serving the American public." To my mind, this would certainly include many of the wealthy and connected who are willing to run roughshod over private property rights in the name of development, and also those who would rather have open borders for the sake of the net drag on wages they exert.
I say these things because I want to point out that with the following question, I am by no means trying to be a smart-aleck. I am genuinely interested in who you think might be "more interested in promoting a Democratic political agenda than serving the American public." Are there such people? What policies do they support? Are any of them running for president now? Have any of them served in high office in past Democratic administrations? I'm genuinely curious.
From my perspective, the best way for a Democrat to serve the public today is to help win elections.
An old-line Dem consultant like Bob Shrum, and GOP talking point-spouting DLC chairman Harold Ford are more interested in promoting a "Democratic agenda" which keeps them in the chips and in a position of prominence, respectively.
For my taste, your favorite, Hillary Clinton, is too accomodating to the GOP fantasy story line for Iraq. I think she represents Realpolitik a little too well at a time when we need a saner, more principled stand.
Nevertheless, the overriding priority is to remove the GOP from the levers of power, so if she gets the nomination, she has my support.
Tulsan, as gently as I can say it, without trying to be mean at all, it really does sound like you just said that it matters less to you that there are self-serving malfeasants in office than that they be the self-serving malfeasants of your choosing.
At that point, the lines get so blurred it's hard to see anything.
Just as the last election made a tremendous difference by opening up investigations and hearings and the subsequent exit of Gonzales, Rove, Rumsfeld, etc., a Democratic win in the White House would allow a real beginning to undoing all the damage done to our country by the GOP under Bush and Rove. If the candidate is not perfectly to my liking, I can accept him/her if he/she takes us in a different and more sane direction. Probably not all the Democratic congresspeople who were elected in the last cycle are perfect, but collectively, they add up to a majority, and thus a major shift in D.C.
However blurry the line is for you, I am sharply focused on that.
Dan, rereading your previous comment, perhaps you misconstrued my mention of Shrum and Ford as conditional endorsements of them. If so, that is emphatically not the case. They are detrimental to the cause of winning elections.
BTW, Ford could come back into play as a U.S. Senatorial candidate in Tennessee. Though he might be a "Liebercrat," he would still advance the overall goal of removing the GOP from power. And that is not an end in itself, but a clearly better choice than more Republican rule.
Tulsan, I understand, I think, your point of view, but it comes very close to sounding very much to me like virtually any Democrat running, no matter how bad, no matter how self-serving, would suit you better than virtually any Republican running. To my mind, this sounds very close to the position criticized in the original post, only coming from the other end of the spectrum.
It's all a question of strategy and priority at this point.
Today. if I had the choice of voting for a ho-hum Democrat vs. a conscientious and able Republican, and that vote made the difference in which party was in the majority, I would regretfully vote Dem.
That probably won't always be true, but with today's situation, that's what I would do. Let's face it, if the Democratic party were an overwhelming majority for too long, you would start to see abuse, just as we have with the GOP (as much?? Hard act to follow.) But we're nowhere close to that now.
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