A national embarrassment
For all its emotional appeal, this column has always opposed wasting time and energy on the impeachment of President Bush. That’s not to say one couldn’t draw up a list of impeachable offenses, from taking the nation to war on false premises to countenancing such outrages against the Constitution as warrantless wiretaps, false imprisonment and torture.
That said, Congress should quit pussyfooting around and impeach Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at once. Halfway measures like a special prosecutor would only produce more of what Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., characterizes as Gonzales’ strategy of “the half-truth, the partial truth and anything but the truth.”
For once, I agree with Newt Gingrich. Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” he declined to defend Gonzales against accusations of repeatedly lying to Congress. “It’s very damaging … We badly need an attorney general who is above any question,” Gingrich said. “Both the president and country are better served if the attorney general is a figure of competence. Sadly, the current attorney general is not seen as any of those things. I think it’s a liability for the president. More importantly, it’s a liability for the United States of America.”
Last April, Gonzales appeared before a Senate committee probing the firings of nine U.S. attorneys, allegedly for being unwilling to prosecute trumped-up voting fraud cases. He testified 60 times that he couldn’t remember crucial memos, e-mails or conversations, including the final meeting where he formally signed off on the plan.
The manager of a Wal-Mart sporting goods department would be fired for such ineptitude. So is Gonzales more cunning or dumb? According to a recent Washington Post article quoting longtime observers, the jury’s still out: “Some regard his verbal difficulties as a strategic ploy on behalf of a president to whom he owes his career; others see a public official overwhelmed by the magnitude of his responsibilities.”
Why not both? Surrounding oneself with half-competent sycophants is a timeless strategy for avoiding personal responsibility. In the present dispute with the Senate Judiciary Committee over the Bush administration’s wireless wiretapping, however, Gonzales appears to have lied himself into a very tight corner.
Besides being of great constitutional importance (Can the president simply defy the 1978 FISA law making warrantless wiretaps a felony? Are Fourth Amendment privacy rights null and void?), the situation is fraught with compelling dramatic elements. Gonzales has twice testified that there was no significant dissent within the Bush administration over Bush’s secretly authorizing the National Security Administration to intercept Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a legal warrant.
Rather than perjuring himself, Gonzales claims that he was merely being cagey. He and his questioners simply meant different things by “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” although he didn’t see fit to say so.
What it all comes down to is a fight between honorable conservative principles and the authoritarian Bush cult. Now that it’s finally dawned on some Republicans that Bushism is destroying their party, impeaching Gonzales would afford them a dramatic opportunity to save it. Or not.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].