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Gone Gone Gone, He's Been Gonzo LongAlberto Gonzales resigns. Finally.

By Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and Dahlia LithwickPosted Monday, Aug. 27, 2007, at 11:27 AM ET

Today's chance of a Gonzales departure: 100 percent
(Previously: zero percent)

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It's pretty much a given that folks in the Bush administration tend to stay on far longer than they ought to, regardless of the damage they do to their offices, staffs, or reputations. And so the interesting question about Alberto Gonzales' resignation becomes: Why now? Why did he wait so obscenely long to step down, and yet not a moment longer? Certainly he gave no inkling to his thinking at his press conference this morning. But we at the Gonzo-Meter have our theories, only one of which is utterly self-involved.

1) It's all about us. There we were, for months on end, predicting the attorney general's imminent demise. Every day he stayed in office was another day when we had to explain why we were the ones with egg on our faces. As Gonzales suffered through furious bipartisan attacks, his own rank missteps, and the unraveling of his department, it seemed as if his function was simply to take the abuse. We determined early and often that he was the ultimate Bush administration punching bag. And that made us the suckers. So finally, in the midst of the pounding, we retired the Gonzo-Meter with a rueful sigh. Gonzales stayed on two more months just to continue to prove us wrong. Even now, in bringing the Gonzo-Meter back, we're proven fatally wrong again—because we'd given up. Good Lord, we now have to renounce our own failure. The man is a tactical genius.

2) It's all about Congress. Gonzales last testified before the Senate judiciary committee more than a month ago, on July 24. Afterward, he faced yet another barrage of criticism, this time for his careful parsing of the word other, as in, when he appeared to previously tell Congress that there had been no internal dissent about the National Security Agency's warrantless-wiretapping effort called the Terrorist Surveillance Program, he was actually talking about "other" surveillance activity. But did Gonzales cave in the face of those attacks? No! He stood strong, with the president's apparent full support. Now, in the doldrums of late August, his resignation is nicely separated from the charge that he's taking a hike because he lied. He can say he has simply served his president long enough and has joined the march out of Washington of other long-serving administration officials. And the administration can finally acknowledge that Gonzales has become a "distraction" for the DoJ while continuing to insist on his "unfair treatment."

3) It's all about Karl Rove. Rove, of course, is chief among the recently announced departures. And it now dawns on us that with his decision to leave went our pet theory for why the administration had been insisting that Gonzales stay. Back in April, we approved of Newsweek's explanation that Bush thinks "a Gonzales resignation would embolden the Dems to go after other targets—like Karl Rove." In other words, Gonzales stayed to provide a distraction from the real story—Rove's wrongdoings—by stumbling and bumbling for the camera. Now with Rove gone, Gonzales has perhaps outlived his usefulness. With nobody to cover for, he's expendable. Which means that it's time to go. Gonzales has always put politics above the law. It would hardly be a surprise if his resignation were of a piece with that.

4) It's all about the Justice Department. Set aside the politics for a moment. Perhaps it simply became impossible for the Gonzales—the great delegator—to delegate anymore. Yes, there's still someone manning the phones at Justice, but the place is leaking lawyers like a busted toilet. In the last few weeks alone, we've witnessed the departure of Wan J. Kim, head of the civil rights division, and former voting rights section chief Bradley Schlozman. Add their names to a list of empty desks: Gonzales' own chief of staff, Kyle Sampson; DoJ's White House liaison, Monica Goodling; and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and his chief of staff, Michael Elston. In light of Gonzales' testimony alleging that these people did all of his work anyhow, without oversight or supervision, maybe he just got tired and decided to follow them out the door. Having to send your own faxes would get any attorney general down.

You can also look for reasons for the timing of the departure in the president's travel schedule. Today Bush visists New Mexico, bringing with him homestate Sen. Pete Domenici, who was central to the firing of former U.S. attorney David Iglesias, and who made an improper phone call to him in connection with an investigation. Then Bush heads to Seattle, the home of John McKay, another of the dearly departed. Or perhaps Gonzo waited until now to leave, when the rest saw it coming four and five months ago, because, as a colleague floated this morning, it opens up the chance for a recess appointment—one that the Senate is not asked to confirm. But it seems to us that there must be a line—albeit a fine one—between Bush administration hubris/cluelessness and utter insanity. Beyond that, what AG appointment could possibly be a more divisive choice than Gonzales? John Yoo does leap to mind.

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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and an editor of DoubleX. John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at . Follow him on Twitter. Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.

Photograph of Alberto Gonzales on Slate's home page by Charles Dharapak/AP.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

By resigning now - and more importantly setting the resignation effectiveness date as Sept 17, Gonzalez precludes an immediate Recess Appointment. So why now?

I think that there is a more subtle political calculus here. By resigning now he avoids another round of nasty investigatory hearings. Yes the subpoenas for his, Meyers et. al. documents will continue. Be we well know that this is headed for SCOTUS and hence nothing will happen before the end of the administration. But Gonzalez can no longer be pulled before Congress to be asked inconvenient questions that harm the Bush Administration.

Then there is the less important factor of the supposed WH memo indicating that those planning to resign should do so by Labor Day 07 or else be expected to serve out the rest of the term.

So by resigning now, AG takes the immediate heat off the WH on the US Attorney Scandal AND the NSA Surveillance issue - which Dems have sworn to revisit after this current recess. It also lets Bush make a visible attempt to work with Congress on finding a mutually acceptable replacement to Gonzalez for the next 3 months. Now we know this will likely fail - because Congress wants an AG that WILL continue to investigate both scandals and WILL comply with subpoenas and that is the last thing POTUS wants.

Then in November, having made a "good faith effort" to "work with Congress", Bush can declare that 3 months of stalemate is enough and he is appointing HIS candidate as a recess appointment. This reduces the political fallout of the recess appointment, while getting around Congressional will.

Not a clean simple answer, but one I think meets the observable facts.

--degsme

(To reply, click here.)

In the middle of his tenure at Justice, a profile of Gonzales by the Washington Post had the Attorney General stewing over how to explain to his ten-year-old son, Gabriel, exactly what it was he did for a living. At the time, his best effort consisted of the following - "I said, 'Well, I go to a lot of meetings'."

What a confession this lighthearted explanation to his child proved to be. What a step down it documented from the lodestar of Constitutional champion to a faceless, memory-less, and unaccountable bureaucrat in the consistent deconstruction of civil liberties. Gonzales, like so many in the Bush Administration, combined ideological rationalization with irrational fear to justify any actions on the part of government.

Likewise, in his short resignation speech, Gonzales attempted to express a basic optimism by declaring, "Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father's best days [as an impoverished migrant worker in Texas]." Once again, it represents the tremendous step down that has been taken by the Bush Administration in defining the American dream.

There was a time when we aspired to be a City on the Hill and a beacon to the rest of the world - not through empty rhetoric but by the integrity of our actions. Today, we cower as we hide our light under a bushel and hiss at those who do not appreciate we are better than the terrorists.

--The_Bell

(To reply, click here.)

First, I think the betting has to be for a recess appointment. Bush seems unlikely to nominate anyone the Democrats will much like, and it shouldn't be hard to get the 40 Senators necessary to prevent an up or down vote. Sure, there's that agreement with Harry Reid that Bush won't pull a John Bolton, but the evidence is pretty strong that the President doesn't consider any promise to Democrats to be binding if it becomes inconvenient.

Some of the choices that have been suggested would seem unlikely because the wrong questions would get asked at the confirmation hearings. Fred Fielding, for instance, actually might be qualified, but his repeated assertions of executive privilege would make any hearing uncomfortable. Michael Chertoff would get asked different, but no less uncomfortable questions about the performance of DHS under his leadership, starting with Katrina and maybe extending to the ongoing passport fiasco. Similar considerations eliminate a lot of possibilities.

I think you also can discount sitting Senators, who otherwise might be attractive. For instance, Arlen Spector would be an interesting choice, since he talks like he's independent, but doesn't act that way, but Pennsylvania's governor is a Democrat, so you would swing one more vote in the Senate against the President.

All things considered, I wonder if the President might end up picking Paul Clement. He's the Solicitor General, so he's gotten past one confirmation already. He doesn't appear to have been involved in the U.S. Attorney firings, which is a plus. He's also part of the team already, which is pretty important to this Administration. He might not be confirmable because of things like the Administration's positions in various Supreme Court cases, but he's plausible enough that the President could make an argument that a recess appointment is both necessary and reasonable if the Senate didn't confirm him by, oh, November, when the next real recess is coming. I think he might be the smartest choice the President could make.

--randy-khan

(To reply, click here.)

(8/30)

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