21/03: Bush, Gonzales and the U.S. Attorneys
Category: Politics
Posted by: A Waco Farmer
Please consider this excellent Andrew McCarthy analysis piece from NRO, which comes highly recommended by Tocqueville.
Excerpts (mostly in McCarthy's own words) :
"Of all the Bush-administration controversies, the tempest over the termination of eight United States attorneys, the top federal prosecutors in their jurisdictions, may ultimately rank as the most damaging. And not because it was the most serious, but because it was the most revealing: about the administration’s ineptitude and Washington’s hypocrisy."
McCarthy's main points in summary:
1. [This] system is political. It is intended to be. Establishing [prosecutorial priorities] is a quintessentially political determination.
2. These are political judgments. They reflect what an administration thinks is important and will resonate with the voters who put it in power.
3. They are precisely the type of judgments for which an administration ought to be accountable.
4. Having said that, the President is at the top of this command pyramid. The Justice Department, including the attorney general and all 93 U.S. attorneys, are high-ranking officers in one of our two political branches. The head of that branch, the executive branch, is the president. Under our Constitution, he is vested with all of the executive power, including the police power. That power is not divided among several players; it is singularly reposed in him. The president chooses all the U.S. attorneys, and, after Senate confirmation, they, like all executive-branch officers, serve at his pleasure. He doesn’t need a reason to fire any of them....
5. Often, the administration’s judgments are bad.
6. There are countless points of tension in the dynamic between the president and the U.S. attorneys he chooses.
7. Being an act of political discretion, the removal of eight U.S. attorneys can and should be critiqued as wise or unwise; [notwithstanding], to be legitimate..., the removal requires no explanation.
8. [T]he Gonzales Justice Department has committed Washington’s worst sin: It has acted like its reasons were noble when in fact they were political, it has misled Congress about that fact, and, when called on it, it has caved … as if the act itself — rather than the dissembling about the act — was illegitimate.
9. The administration's pretense that this political act was, in fact, high-minded or a performance-based decision created this media firestorm.
10. So we have classic Washington farce. The politicians on Capitol Hill theatrically castigate the politicians in the administration for making political decisions about political appointees based on political considerations. The politicians in the administration reply, “That would never happen,” before conceding that it precisely happened … without their knowledge, of course. And the political press is aghast."
Read the entire article here.
Excerpts (mostly in McCarthy's own words) :
"Of all the Bush-administration controversies, the tempest over the termination of eight United States attorneys, the top federal prosecutors in their jurisdictions, may ultimately rank as the most damaging. And not because it was the most serious, but because it was the most revealing: about the administration’s ineptitude and Washington’s hypocrisy."
McCarthy's main points in summary:
1. [This] system is political. It is intended to be. Establishing [prosecutorial priorities] is a quintessentially political determination.
2. These are political judgments. They reflect what an administration thinks is important and will resonate with the voters who put it in power.
3. They are precisely the type of judgments for which an administration ought to be accountable.
4. Having said that, the President is at the top of this command pyramid. The Justice Department, including the attorney general and all 93 U.S. attorneys, are high-ranking officers in one of our two political branches. The head of that branch, the executive branch, is the president. Under our Constitution, he is vested with all of the executive power, including the police power. That power is not divided among several players; it is singularly reposed in him. The president chooses all the U.S. attorneys, and, after Senate confirmation, they, like all executive-branch officers, serve at his pleasure. He doesn’t need a reason to fire any of them....
5. Often, the administration’s judgments are bad.
6. There are countless points of tension in the dynamic between the president and the U.S. attorneys he chooses.
7. Being an act of political discretion, the removal of eight U.S. attorneys can and should be critiqued as wise or unwise; [notwithstanding], to be legitimate..., the removal requires no explanation.
8. [T]he Gonzales Justice Department has committed Washington’s worst sin: It has acted like its reasons were noble when in fact they were political, it has misled Congress about that fact, and, when called on it, it has caved … as if the act itself — rather than the dissembling about the act — was illegitimate.
9. The administration's pretense that this political act was, in fact, high-minded or a performance-based decision created this media firestorm.
10. So we have classic Washington farce. The politicians on Capitol Hill theatrically castigate the politicians in the administration for making political decisions about political appointees based on political considerations. The politicians in the administration reply, “That would never happen,” before conceding that it precisely happened … without their knowledge, of course. And the political press is aghast."
Read the entire article here.
Tocqueville wrote:
The U.S. Attorney Scandal, Explained!
We haven't written much about the foofaraw over the Bush administration's firings of eight U.S. attorneys, because we don't understand the issues involved. But a reader calls our attention to a transcript of "Washington Week," which explicates some of the issues:
Gwen Ifill: One more question for you, Doyle, on this point, which is there has been much back and forth about whether this is something which is unprecedented--this firing. Whether it is okay for the president to do it, because after all, as Tony Snow said repeatedly today, these people serve at the pleasure of the president. Is there a precedent for it?
Doyle McManus: Well, there is and there isn't. This [is] one of those awful things where you go back into the history and everybody is still arguing about what the history means. Look, it's always been a bit of a tradition that when the White House changes in party, when Richard Nixon was succeeded by--who was that? No, that was Gerald Ford. When Gerald Ford was succeeded by Jimmy Carter, when Bill Clinton was succeeded by--when Clinton took over, and when President Bush took over from Clinton, at that point it's pretty much customary for the U.S. attorneys in place to submit their resignations. Now, Republicans are arguing that Janet Reno under Bill Clinton went farther and demanded the resignations, but even then Bill Clinton didn't fire everybody.
This is different. It's in the middle of a term. It's within the president's right to do it. That's technically true. But what even some conservative Republican legal specialists are worried about is this: are we sliding toward a politicization of that job of U.S. attorney? There's always been politics involved. Senators get involved. But are we sliding towards--and that was what was, of course, ugly in those e-mails.
Alexis Simendinger: Yes. And I think we should add, too, that we're talking about eight individuals who were appointed--politically appointed by the president of the United States. They were chosen by this president, so we're not talking about him being concerned about Democratic holdovers or some other president's choices. We're talking about his own choices.
To sum up:
1. It was OK for Bill Clinton to fire 93 U.S. attorneys, because he "didn't fire everybody." But it was not OK for Bush to fire eight of them.
2. Firing U.S. attorneys of the opposite party is fine, but firing U.S. attorneys of your own party is evidence of "politicization."
Makes sense, doesn't it?