You Don't Say

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

"Over the past two and a half years, I have seen tyranny, dishonesty, corruption and depravity of types I never thought possible. I've seen things I didn't know man was capable of."

-- Alberto Ganzales

Alberto Gonzales on the occasion of his resignation from the post of Attorney General of the United States; September 14, 2007.

Reagan's Legacy: Executive Amnesia

The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, c.1954

Dali, Salvador


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There's a very clever graphic on the cover of The Huffington Post this morning. A Warholesque pattern of 122 images of ex-Gonazales aide Kyle Sampson. One for every memory lapse he reported on the Senate floor yesterday. "I don't remember." Get used to that phrase. We'll be hearing it a lot in the coming weeks and months.

Reagan did it with an actor's flair, but it was Reagan who ushered in this age of executive exceptionalism. "I cannot recall," he said over and over in his Iran-Contra testimony. And with that endearing little nod, that seemed to say, "Why I am just a simple man. A man of the people, baffled by these dark political machinations."

I remember my grandfather cluck, cluck, clucking in disgust. "If he were the CEO of a company," he'd say, "You know how long he'd be tellin' that story? About as long as it took him to grab his things and walk to the front gate." But my grandfather was one of those men in "gray flannel" Paul Krugman writes about. He was the product of that bygone era, when the buck actually stopped somewhere.

This is Reagan's legacy. An era of unaccountability for those who achieve the requisite wealth and influence. A time when men of small skill, but excellent breeding, fail ever upwards and descend, when they do, on golden parachutes. An era when only the little people experience the consequences, not only of their personal failings, but of the colossal failings of their "betters." When average workers of a company like Enron lose their livelihoods, their savings, their homes. But can only stare in rapt amazement as the wheels of justice grind slowly on, bringing few prosecutions and vacating that of a dead architect of corporate failure.

There is no "pound 'em in the ass prison" for even token prosecutions like Scooter Libby. That nice white boy shouldn't see the inside of a jail cell says even his jury. He didn't mean any harm. He was just so forgetful.

Wag The Children Tour Stumbles

Alberto Gonzales's Wag the Children tour is getting off to a rocky start. The press seems to be having a little trouble getting into the spirit of things. They just keep prodding and pestering him over this trifling federal prosecutor scandal. Today the fearless protector of our little ones was actually driven from the podium with the carping of Chicago reporters. Can't they read? "Protect Safe Childhood!!!" Can't miss it. It's on a great big, Orwellian backdrop that was paid for with our tax dollars. Doesn't say "Prosecutorgate" over and over in big block letters, now does it? These reporters seem to have forgotten how these things work. Let's review:

Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home.
-- Stephen Colbert

Yeesh!

The Checkered Rhetoric of Alberto Gonzales

Well the "Checkers Speech" it ain't, but the latest attempt by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to weasel out of Prosecutorgate is certainly a nod to that master of pathos, Richard M. Nixon.

The only questions he answered from reporters there, however, showed he hadn't escaped the scandal that has engulfed the capital for weeks _ and led to growing calls for his ouster.

"I'm not going to resign," he said. "I'm going to stay focused on protecting our kids."

Nixon dodged a slush fund scandal and rescued his political career by talking about his dog. Alberto Gonzales hides behind our children, as new details emerge daily about his role in the political, and possibly illegal, ouster of federal prosecutors. Which is more venal? Well, like most things to do with the Bush Administration, I have to give the nod to Gonzales. Yes, the burgeoning corruption of Bushco actually makes me long for the halcyon days of Nixon. Even at the height of Watergate, it was a simpler, more honest time.

Where Nixon relied on a shameless, pull on your heart strings, Norman Rockwellesque picture of a family and their cuddly pup, you can always count on any member of Bushco to go straight for fear. You need me or your children are going to be molested... possibly murdered.

The embattled attorney general is reaching beyond Washington over the next week to try to soothe his remaining prosecutors and show the public he's still working hard to curb crime. He'll also talk with local media in dozens of cities Friday about keeping kids safe from sexual predators.

Stay tuned, folks. Alberto Gonzales may be bringing his "Wag the Children" extravaganza to a city near you.

Harriet Miers: Loyal to the End

Well. At least one question is answered by the newest revelations about the federal prosecutor purge; Harriet Miers resignation. I knew there was some reason other the one proffered by Tony Snow.

Basically, she has been here six years.

I guess it would have sounded too silly even for Snow to say that the childless spinster wanted to spend more time with her family. Miers has devoted her life to her career... and to George W. Bush. So when she suddenly abandoned both, it smacked of a deeper mystery. And now it has been solved. Miers is a key figure in the firing of all those pesky, "disloyal" federal prosecutors.

Miers announced her resignation on January 4, 2007. A glance at the TPM time-line reminds us that on January 13 we learned that:

The head of the FBI's San Diego office and several former federal prosecutors are publicly questioning the politics behind the Bush administration's effort to force Carole Lam to resign as U.S. Attorney for San Diego.

It was a small but nagging point. No one resigns for no good reason.