The Cherry Orchard

In yesterday’s Rose Garden speech (aptly covered by Crooks and Liars) President Bush answered questions about the incredible Alberto Gonzales scandal by asking America to be satisfied with a closed-door “internal investigation” that the Justice Department is apparently conducting. Why on earth should we be satisfied with an internal investigation when so much evidence has already been revealed in Congress?

I never intended this blog to turn into “the Gonzales watch”, but my instincts tell me this big story is going to keep getting bigger. If the President continues to hold the position that there has been no significant wrongdoing at the Department of Justice despite the absolutely gigantic amount of evidence to the contrary, Congress needs to respond by examining this misstep as grounds for impeachment.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is all over the news this week, following his unconvincing Senate testimony last week (here’s one of the stories going around, and there was a lot of hilarity after President Bush claimed that Gonzales’s testimony helped his case). Still, I have a strange sense that most news outlets aren’t communicating exactly why this is such a high-stakes situation for the Bush administration and for the House/Senate leadership, and why the Bush administration is clinging so stubbornly to the hope that Gonzales will not be eventually forced to resign. There’s a hidden story here, and most Washington DC journalists know it and hint about it, but for some reason few journalists are coming right out and explaining what’s going on in this case.

The fact is, Gonzales is not just another high-ranking Bush appointee. He’s the Attorney General, which means he has the authority to investigate and prosecute anyone suspected of committing a federal crime, including top administration officials up to the level of the President’s top staff, thus encircling the President himself. As a longtime friend of George W. Bush and a key member of the Bush/Cheney team, Alberto Gonzales is not going to prosecute anybody close to the Bush administration for any number of wrongdoings. A different Attorney General, however, might.

Even though the Attorney General is a Presidential appointee, the appointee must be approved by the Senate, and our current Senate is not going to approve a candidate who does not demonstrate a basic willingness to investigate the Executive office independently of Presidential influence. So, if Gonzales were to resign, an extremely contentious nomination/approval process would begin for his replacement, and since this nation cannot survive long without leadership in the Department of Justice, some compromise candidate would have to eventually be approved. This new Attorney General could prove very hazardous for the Bush White House as our Congress and Senate continue to conduct aggressive investigations into the workings of the Executive office.

This is what’s at the core of the Alberto Gonzales showdown: our government is somewhere near a state of constituional crisis, similar to the constitutional crisis of 1973-74. Remember Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre? This was one of the most critical turning points of the Watergate scandal, and it all revolved around the Attorney General’s office.

I’m not sure why so many journalists aren’t stating this clearly to the American people, but the Alberto Gonzales case is all about the viability of the Bush/Cheney administration. And I don’t believe it for a minute when Gonzales says he’s made his own choice not to resign. He’s not resigning because George W. Bush is begging him not to, and I bet he’d zoom out of Washington DC like a rocket if Bush let go of his arm. Gonzales has nothing to gain and nothing to lose at this point, but George W. Bush needs him sitting in that chair.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is almost definitely going to resign. Yay. One more liar down.

I don’t usually gaze into crystal balls, but here’s a rare Cherry Orchard political prediction just for the fun of it. Dick Cheney will resign the Vice-Presidency “for health reasons” by mid-summer. Condoleeza Rice will replace him, in an attempted “sacrifice fly” by the White House administration. Whether the sac succeeds or not, time will tell.

You read it here first.

I’d just like to point to two posts on Daily Kos today:

Waterboarding. This is just a clip from a movie, but the illustration helps to understand what the word means. I could preach about this, but it’d be better if you just watch the short clip and come to your own conclusion.

Me Shooting My Mouth Off Again I read DailyKos regularly and I am fairly sympatico with most of the points of view represented there. However, I don’t feel confident that Democrats have a coherent strategy for 2006 (or 2008) and I think liberal/progressive activists should try to find every opportunity to de-politicize their message and appeal to a wider range of American voters. The big message for 2006 should be “WE NEED COMPETENT GOVERNMENT, AND THIS AIN’T IT”. Incompetence, incompetence, incompetence, incompetence. We don’t need any other charge to win elections, and liberals should stop over-prosecuting their case. I’ve posted about this a few times on Daily Kos and elsewhere. Sometimes I get nice reactions (big plus signs, which means people like what I said), and sometimes I get ignored. I’m pretty sure I’m right, either way.