I guess Alberto Gonzales never learned that lesson in college. WaPo:
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has retreated from public view this week in an intensive effort to save his job, spending hours practicing testimony and phoning lawmakers for support in preparation for pivotal appearances in the Senate this month, according to administration officials.
After struggling for weeks to explain the extent of his involvement in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, Gonzales and his aides are viewing the Senate testimony on April 12 and April 17 as seriously as if it were a confirmation proceeding for a Supreme Court or a Cabinet appointment, officials said.Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, and Timothy E. Flanigan, who worked for Gonzales at the White House, have met with the attorney general to plot strategy. The department has scheduled three days of rigorous mock testimony sessions next week and Gonzales has placed phone calls to more than a dozen GOP lawmakers seeking support, officials said.
Although Paul Keil's "eye of the tiger" comment is pretty funny, I think John Cole really nails it here:
Let’s clarify that in a normal administration the Attorney General’s panic would make no sense. Clinton officials, who spent half their time sitting in front of hostile committees, didn’t drop their jobs and cram for weeks before appearing. If the decisions surrounding the US Attorney purge left the normal kind of paper trail then Gonzales could just produce those to Congress and then answer questions about them...As I see it the problem mainly stems from the simple point that when people operate without oversight, they get sloppy. That holds especially true for Bushies since the quality of a policy fades in importance relative its ideological purity. Without an effective check these guys always run off into crazy Feith world. So when Gonzo lied about something as banal as whether he or Rove played a role in the firings I don’t think he meant to cover up a specific crime as much as he was simply showing his usual contempt for Congress. He lied because yesterday’s Congress didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Old habits die hard.
The thing that really baffles me about all of this is that given everything we already know, Gonzales best excuse is that he had simply no idea what the people who reported directly to him were doing. Given that, how precisely does it help his case to disengage from his department for weeks to cram for his upcoming session with congress. Is that really the best way for the Attorney General to be spending his time?
Subscribe to this blog's feed
