Black Box Report

I had almost given up...

I was convinced Alberto Gonzales could eat a cat on live television and the President would claim the feline was depressed and had committed suicide.

Not since Don Rumsfeld set the bar for how inept, mendacious and generally out of touch you could be for the longest stretch of time and not get fired from the Bush adminstration has there been a public servant so stubbornly clinging to office without reason. Rumsfeld set the bar high, and while Albert Gonzales may not have been a poet like Rumsfeld, when it came to being the totally wrong guy for the job, no one did "incompetent" like 'Berto.

There was really no way for his critics to defend him, short of sticking their fingers in their ears and repeating "La-La-La-La-La-La-La-I'm-not-Listening!" (See President Bush doing just about that here.) You either recognized that Gonzales prevaricated, twisted and flat-out lied through mutliple congressional hearings, or you chose to believe that he was telling the truth - and therefore had to be the most inept, incompetent administrator in the history of the Justice Department. There was no third option.

He was 'Fredo, 'Berto, "Gonzo" and "the turture guy." He was a Yes-man and and an I-don't-recall loyalist. Singularly cagey and brazenly ignorant, he could - and did - argue that while the Constitution specifically prohibited taking away one's right of habeus corpus, since it didn't expressly grant that right in its language, then the right to habeus corpus simply did not exist.

As Mom would say, he was a piece of work.

There is almost no limit to material for how bad Gonzales was. So, while there are certainly other aspects to the story of Gonzales long-overdue resignation - like who's goiing to replace him (and why) - let's savor this with a leisurely stroll through the blogospheric reactions. Someone with such a unique place in American history as the most incompetent, truthfully challenged public servant ever to abuse the position of Attorney General deserves nothing less.

Moderates hated him too!

Whining to the end that he has been treated unfairly and (isn't this rich) was being hounded out of office by partisan politics, Gonzalez leaves an extraordinary legacy: A disdain for the rule of law - whether it had to do with torture, civil rights or fair elections - that bordered on the obsessive.

And let's not forget his obsession with not telling the truth. Wonkette catches him going out the way he sevred - lying through his teeth:

Even until the bitter end, Gonzo was lying about every goddamn thing he could:

Mr. Roehrkasse said Sunday afternoon that he had telephoned Mr. Gonzales about the reports circulating in Washington that a resignation was imminent, “and he said it wasn’t true, so I don’t know what more I can say.”

That’s his own spokesman he lied to. For no discernible reason at all. The man lies about what he wants for breakfast in the morning. He tells his dog she’s good but doesn’t mean it.

Anyway, Democrats won, hooray, and all they had to do to win the resignation of a criminal they should’ve impeached was agree to sign away all of our rights in a wiretapping bill that they were angry with Fredo for illegally trying to enforce in the first place.

But don't cry for 'Berto. Pam's House Blend reminds us the rewards that await such incompetence:

When shall we expect to see him to receive a Medal of Freedom from Dear Leader?

That's probably more than he expects, and certainly more than he deserves. Gonzales is probably just happy enough to be able to slink off into obscurity instead of being the laughing stock of his peers and the country:

As for why this is happening, I imagine Gonzales is tired of being a punching bag, tired of his boss saying, "Stick around! I want to fight these people! So go out there and get beat up for me!"

Now, before we get into the creme de la creme, I wanted to present some opposing viewpoints. First, Blogs for Bush, doing the blogging other Americans don't want to do, can't imagine why anyone would have a problem with that nice, loyal puppy dog Attorney General who was just doing the good Lord's President's work:

The Democrat Smear Machine Claims Another Victim

Democrats may be patting themselves on the back right now, but this just another example of Democrats repeating a lie over and over and over enough that the lie was accepted as conventional wisdom...Republicans needs to start fighting back against the Democratic Smear Machine.

Sometimes I think that B4B isn't really a blog written by actual humans, but an automated computer program that just spits out random RNC talking points based on keyword alerts in Google News.

Mr. Benen, rebuttal?

No, it wasn’t the AG’s criminal incompetence, breathtaking dishonesty, and multilpe scandals that “distracted” the Justice Department; it was Gonzales’ critics who had the audacity to point these problems out. Got it.

And then there's the Rolls Royce of conservative wingnuttery. When you want to come to a conclusion diametrically opposed to logic, the boys at Powerline are at your service (emphasis mine):

I’ve never been a fan of Gonzales, but I can’t help feeling sorry for him. The “scandal” that led to his demise—the firing of the U.S. attorneys—appears to involve no wrongdoing on his part. Moreover, the underlying decisions and process appear to have been the product of the White House, not Gonzales. His defense of the decisions was hardly stellar, but if I’m correct, he was handicapped by the fact that they were not really his decisions.

Gonzales’s only real offense seems to have been mediocrity. But mediocrity in an Attorney General is nothing new (think Janet Reno), and any blame for this occurrence properly attaches to the White House.

And if you're not correct, John?

This is from Powerline's John Hinderaker, who previously had this to say about the man in that selfsame White House:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

And therefore, QED, since Bush is a misunderstood genius, then this whole affair is actually a brilliant ploy and Alberto Gonzales is vindicated! Huzzah!

Alternatively, if you aren't trying to be willfully ignorant, then the reason Gonzales' scandals "appear to involve no wrongdoing" is because he demonstrably lied about his and others' involvement and we have yet to hear the truth*.
(*See "Scooter" Libby)

But back to the obituaries...

Andrew Cohen has been law blogging on Gonzales longer than he would care to, as no one public servant should ever be involved in so many ethical dilemmas as Gonzales' has. And after lo these many months and years, Cohen has made quite the case against him:

He neither served the longstanding role as "the people's attorney" nor fully met and tamed his duties and responsibilities to the Constitution. He was a man who got the job not because he was supremely qualified or notably well-respected among the leading legal lights of our time, but because he had faithfully and with blind obedience served President George W. Bush for years in Texas (where he botched clemency memos in death penalty cases) and then as White House counsel (where he botched the nation's legal policy on torture).

For an administration known for its cronyism, and alas for an alarmingly incompetent group of cronies, Gonzales was the granddaddy of them all. He lacked the integrity, the intellect and the independence to perform his duties in a manner befitting the job for which he was chosen. And when he and his colleagues got caught in the act, his rationales and explanations for the purge of the U.S. Attorneys were so empty and shallow and incoherent that even the staunchest Republicans could not turn them into steeled spin. Devoid of any credibility, Gonzales in the end was a sad joke when he came to Capitol Hill.

Or if that's too dry for your tastes, you can get it straight, no chaser, from The Left:

...everybody can appropriately heap scorn on this useless, recently resigned halfling and his legacy of incompetence, politicization, and unfamiliarity with basic Constitutional principles. Like Karl Rove, I think his family-oriented retirement should be riddled with numerous subpoenas.

As they say, read the whole thing. Norbizness at his non-happy, non-furriest.

And so we bid a fond farewell to the one and only "Master of Disater," the latest adminstration hack who held service to his friend the President in higher esteem than service to the Constitution or his country:

We may never see his like again. Well, at least not until the confirmation hearings for his successor.

Or until the subpoenas are served, whichever comes first.