Gonzales Flops In Senate Hearings And Loses Republican Support

He came. He saw.

And he did not conquer.

By all but the most lockstep-administration supporting accounts, embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales flopped in his testimony before Senators yesterday to explain the still-curious case of the firing of Republican U.S. attorneys who many believe were axed because they either didn’t go after Democrats fast enough or went after Republicans too quickly. (This is the case where a huge batch of perhaps-relevant emails from White House political maven Karl Rove were lost….according to Rove’s lawyer.) But the real issue has become Gonzales’ earlier statements to Congress which have been at odds with new press reports and testimony by some of his colleagues.

Gonzales yesterday left a path of raised eyebrows, disbelievers, skeptics and a call (to his face) for his resignation.

And that was just among Republicans. The New York Times:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales encountered anger and skepticism from senators today as he insisted that he had nothing to hide in the dismissals of eight United States attorneys, an episode that has cast a shadow on the Justice Department and brought calls for his resignation.

“I am here today to do my part to ensure that all facts about this matter are brought to light,� he told the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, noting that the panel’s inquiry into the dismissals had already yielded thousands of pages of internal departmental communications and hours of interviews with department officials.

“These are not the actions of someone with something to hide,� Mr. Gonzales said in his opening remarks.

His reception from Democrats and Republicans alike, at a hearing that was widely seen as a make-or-break event, did not seem to augur well for Mr. Gonzales.

But if Democrats and Republicans clearly came together in a rare occurence — their belief that the administration and country would be better served with someone else heading the Justice Department and that Gonzales’ testimony was unsatisfying — it made little difference in the end: President George W. Bush made it known that he was pleased with Gonzales’ testimony. The White House issued a statement that will perhaps go down as the ultimate spin — and a potential peril for Republicans worried about 2008 since polls show Gonzales is now the political equivalent of tainted pet food:

President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General’s testimony today. After hours of testimony in which he answered all of the Senators’ questions and provided thousands of pages of documents, he again showed that nothing improper occurred. He admitted the matter could have been handled much better, and he apologized for the disruption to the lives of the U.S. Attorneys involved, as well as for the lack of clarity in his initial responses.

The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and he appreciates the work he is doing at the Department of Justice to help keep our citizens safe from terrorists, our children safe from predators, our government safe from corruption, and our streets free from gang violence.

Writes Salon’s Glenn Greenwald in a piece that should be read in full:

But — historically at least — this President does not fire people under pressure. When political pressures are exerted on Bush, he does the opposite of what is demanded of him — for no reason except to defy the requests of others. As but one example, the endless and years-long demands from many circles that Donald Rumsfeld be fired by itself ensured that Rumsfeld remained, until he was days away from becoming the longest-serving Defense Secretary in our nation’s history.

Bush fires those who are disloyal. Those who are subservient and loyal are never fired, no matter their level of incompetence or corruption. Roughly a month ago, Chuck Schumer went on CNN’s Late Edition and called for Gonzales’ resignation and, in response, Lindsey Graham said: “I think the fact that Senator Schumer asked for him to step down means he won’t.”

That is how Bush works. If someone demands that Bush take action, he will petulantly refuse simply to demonstrate that he does not comply with anyone else’s will. He is The Decider, nobody else, and nothing is more important than for him to demonstrate that. And loyalty to the Leader is valued infinitely higher than either integrity or competence, which are not remotely required for positions in the administration.

There was a wide variety of blog opinion on the Gonzales testimony. Read this and this. But the bottom line was:

Gonzales did NOT advance his cause.

And, in fact, various news reports detail a growing feeling among Republicans that he has got to go. The AP:

Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers challenged the embattled attorney general during an often-bitter five-hour hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Lawmakers confronted Gonzales with documents and sworn testimony they said showed he was more involved in the dismissals than he contended.

“The best way to put this behind us is your resignation,” Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma bluntly told Gonzales, one GOP conservative to another.

Gonzales disagreed, rejecting the idea that his departure would put the controversy to rest.

Even with the White House offering fresh support, it was a long day for the attorney general.

Seventy-one times he fell back on faulty memory, saying he could not recall or remember conversations or events surrounding the firings. During breaks in the hearing, sign-waving protesters rose from the audience calling for him to resign.

Faulty memory isn’t usually a quality Americans have sought in their attorney generals.

Americans have, in fact, accepted highly political attorney generals (people who say Americans have not are forgetting Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General for his brother President John F. Kennedy) but all of them show a semblance of independence or intense personal political convictions that seem to stem from within them. Gonzales is increasingly coming across as a creature controlled by his Presidential boss’ desires (or “pleasure” as the parlance goes) and perhaps influenced by his boss’ political maven (Karl Rove).

At best, the portrait that has emerged in recent weeks from a slew of news reports and his testimony yesterday suggest a weak individual who is easily politically dominated. At worst, the portrait that is emerging is of someone who an outright political hack and should never have been appointed at all. An unspoken sentiment among Republicans seems to be buyer’s remorse.

Another unspoken point of unanimity: there are likely MANY now who are grateful to the GOP’s conservative wing for sandbagging feelers two years ago about possibly sticking Gonzales on the Supreme Court.

McClatchy Newspapers’ coverage was blunt:

Republican support for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales evaporated before his eyes Thursday as a Senate hearing into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys generated more pressure for his resignation.

Struggling to keep his job, Gonzales sat stoically as former allies on the Senate Judiciary Committee turned against him. Two of the panel’s Republicans joined Democrats in urging the attorney general to step down. Others sharply criticized his management skills or questioned his credibility…..

…White House officials, however, said President Bush was pleased with Gonzales’ performance. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Gonzales “has the full confidence of the president.”

The reaction on Capitol Hill wasn’t nearly as positive. Democrats said they didn’t hear anything to shake their belief that at least some of the prosecutors were fired because they stood up to pressure to go after Democrats or go easy on Republicans.

Republican lawmakers rejected suggestions that the firings were politically motivated, but they criticized Gonzales’ handling of the controversy.

Even Republicans who defended Gonzales said that he’d made mistakes.

“I think we all will agree – I think you’ve agreed – that this was poorly handled,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told Gonzales. “I mean, how many times do you have to be flagellated over that?”

As Gonzales left the committee room, protesters sang, “Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Gon-za-les, goodbye,” a take-off on the 1969 hit Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.

But perhaps not.

As Greenwald suggests, the stick-to-it trait that some GOPers found so attractive in Bush has now (in the case of Gonzales and in the case of the war) become a political liability. The message from the White House continues to be: “I HAVE the final decision — not any of you.”

Truman’s message was “The Buck Stops Here.” Bush’s seems to be: “I Control The Treasury And All The Bucks.”

The question is whether Republicans will adjust their stances accordingly and once again follow the White House line — a line increasingly shaky as polls show support for Gonzales going south,
Democrats licking their chops at the prospect of more hearings and some in the press sniffing potential Pulitzers if they dutifully investigate a story with many unresolved questions and perhaps yet unknown subpaths into even more journalistically lucrative areas.

Will Republicans walk an increasingly independent walk, or will they hitch the party’s image and perhaps their future to Gonzales and his backer in the White House — and perhaps in the process walk the political plank?

UPDATE: The New Republic has a must-read account of the hearings. A small excerpt:

Maybe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing would have gone better if he and the senators had worked out one major misunderstanding beforehand. In Gonzales’s trial to keep his job today, the senators–seated in a giant hearing room filled with hot-pink-clad protesters waving pocket constitutions–clearly understood Gonzales to be the defendant. The attorney general, however, seemed to believe he had been called as an expert forensic witness.

Throughout the hearing, Gonzales displayed an odd dissociation from his job as head of the Justice Department, often behaving more as though he was a diligent inspector general called in to analyze what had happened rather than someone who had made things happen himself.

…The Republican senators should have been easy to placate, since they don’t believe the firings were politically motivated; their concern was over how the firings’ were handled–and over Gonzales’s competence–so all the attorney general needed to do was show them he still controlled the Justice Department enough to remain its chief. (Lingering Republican support would have at least allowed the White House to blame Democratic partisans for dissatisfaction with Gonzales.) But, instead of presenting himself as self-assured, Gonzales portrayed a man just beginning to understand the goings-on of his agency. And so Republican senators–the president’s weather balloons–began to betray him.

Read it all.