William F. Buckley on the Gonzales question:
“Of one thing Mr. Bush is manifestly guilty. It is the criminal (in the metaphorical sense) mismanagement of the whole business of the U.S. attorneys. The fault is not personal; it was probably the attorney general and other advisers of the president who took so many clumsy steps. But Mr. Bush’s stress on his rights invites a coordinate stress on his responsibilities. “These attorneys,” he said, “serve at my pleasure.” Right. But presidential pleasures have to rest on defensible grounds.”
While I know he is the “dean of conservatism”, he is quite wrong in this assumption of “malfeasance” as are others on the right who seemed in lockstep with the insanity of the democrats who insist on a crime present that could not possibly be there.
First no matter what the emails say, don’t say, or whatever, they do not show any instance of illegality, nor anything out of the ordinary for White House communications. Fact is that those who are “oohing and aahing” over their details seem competely ignorant to the nature of the type of communication that takes place in Government.
To the amature investigator they’re content may sound ominious, but from my informed eye there is absolutely nothing I see that even suggests an impropriety or some evil scheme, and yes I have been sifting through them as well. As I said before, rather than show some sinister scheme they show a carefulness that is completely mind-boggling. It’s almost that they were too careful that the prosecutor replacements were accomplished to have the least effect on all those involved.
Hell, at least they weren’t given a scant ten days to clear out.
You can call Gonzales a confused soul or idiot and maybe even President Bush a “criminal mismanager” (sounds personal on the part of WFB imo), but the fact is that nothing seen so far needed to come to where it’s at today.
On the fact that the administration didn’t handle the press portion of the operation correctly we can agree, but then PR has never been a Bush administration strong point. Nevertheless to give the Democrats the scalp they want will do nothing but open the flood gates, because as I said on the show today they won’t be happy until they have impeached President Bush.
While even that act would cause no shed tears on some conservatives – especially on the far right – because of immigration issues, Harriett Miers, etc, nevertheless it’s time to stop kow-towing to Democrats who are in no position to throw stones in regards to corruption or ineptness.
What we are watching is a story that has grown far beyond the original script, on the par of a plant growing from a pebble. Grown in large part with the meme enabling of those on the right who have jumped on the happy-juice bandwagon with the Democrats.
Since it’s Sunday the Good Book says, “A house divided cannot stand”
Oh, and spare me the “We need to be above reproach” speeches as well. The fact is that nothing has taken place here, except in the fantasies of those of both the left and the right.
No Response
kathie
March 24th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
1Gonzales was involved in process, his subordinates were working on the people to be replaced using the process set out by the AG. Why is that so hard to understand? Why pretend that they are one in the same? I think that the White House is continually caught by surprise. Guilty of naivet?©.
crosspatch
March 25th, 2007 at 10:39 am
2I think we have a problem with semantics here. He might not have been involved in the selection process of the individual US-A but he would have most certainly “signed off” on it from a high level overall position. So he might not have been intimately involved in the specifics for each individual, at some point someone would have gone to him and said “we have deecided that these 8 US-A should be removed. We are getting complaints about them from Congress, their peers, and the public.” At which point Gonzales probably said okay.
It is a matter of what people mean when they say “involved”. Do I think he was involved in the detailed selection process? No, no more than the top board members of IBM would be involved in some housecleaning in the various corporate legal staffs in offices around the country but they would probably be asked to sign off on it when employees are let go and need to be replaced so that consideration can be given to who the replacements might be.
For example, I heard on the radio yesterday that the San Francisco US-A that was asked to resign was a loyal Bush supporter who has never spoken out against the move. His being asked to go was due more to personal leadership style and the fact that his underlings were practically in mutiny and morale was described as the worst of any office in the country. Those are the exact reasons *why* people are replaced.
All of this is the Democrats attempting to manufacture a scandal and certain Republicans playing right into that and wanting to toss Gonzales under a bus just because there *is* a scandal. I also believe that much of the criticism against Gonzales is based on semantics.
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