No conservatives will go on Fox News to defend Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The link also notes: no White House officials would go on the air to defend him, either…
This is not just a sign of Gonzales’ isolation.
It is a sign of the increasing isolation of the Bush administration. If you cut away any journalistic diplomacy it boils down to this: Republicans are stuck with the Bush administration and some are choosing to distance themselves from it discreetly and others feel they have to defend it because they could become collateral damage.
More than ever, Gonzales is in his post because one man in the United States wants him there. But in doing so, each day he’s there he hurts his own party, his own President — and to defend him White House Press spokesman Tony Snow has had to morph into a cross between Pinocchio and Nixon’s press secretary Ron Ziegler.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.