The Cherry Orchard

I try to keep it fresh here at the Orchard, but sometimes I have to dredge up a story of my own from a few weeks earlier, just because it is my self-appointed role to ask the more established members of our journalistic community to do a better job at reporting the news, and everybody — EVERYBODY — seems to be missing the obvious subtext of the weird showdown taking place in Washington DC right now between the executive and legislative branches over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

So, Take Two. As I said before. To repeat myself. THE ALBERTO GONZALES AFFAIR IS NOT JUST ANOTHER SCANDAL, and THIS IS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL. Disgraced government officials come and go, and it’s not shattering news when a key member of any US president’s cabinet gets into trouble. But it is shattering news when:

1) that US president is facing intensive investigations of his conduct in office and is stonewalling key pieces of information relevant to these investigations.

2) the disgraced government official is the Attorney General, with vast power to influence (or impede) the progress of criminal and civil investigations involving the White House.

3) this disgraced government official refuses to resign against an absolute barrage of damning testimony and evidence against him, including (now) a highly unusual congressional vote of “no confidence” against him.

One plus one plus one equals three. And it is as clear as glass that the reason Alberto Gonzales is refusing (against all rational advice from both Republicans and Democrats) to resign is that the Bush administration is terrified of what a less sympathetic Attorney General could investigate.

I said it before, and I cannot be the only American doing the math here. Why do the major news outlets not explain this equation to the American people? I truly don’t understand.

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.

When I was 16 or 17 I went with my family to Palm Springs and Los Angeles. Here are me and Kelly watching ex-President Gerald Ford at a Rancho Mirage celebrity golf tournament that also featured Bob Hope, Lawrence Welk and Wayne Rogers (from M*A*S*H). Lawrence Welk said hi to me, but Dad said Welk looked like he thought I was going to mug him.

I’m sorry to hear that Gerald Ford has died, the day after Christmas in 2006. I thought he was a decent man and a moderate President, which was certainly what America needed after six years of Richard Nixon. In fact, after six years of George W. Bush, I think we need a Gerald Ford again.

I don’t think Ford was wrong to pardon Richard Nixon. The sad loss of his reputation was punishment enough for Richard Nixon.

I wish I could say something smart relating to John Updike’s Memories of the Ford Administration (which is, by the way, an ironically-titled novel and not a memoir), but the truth is that even though I liked the book I didn’t finish it. I’ll try to dig it up and maybe I’ll file a report on LitKicks next week.

I’m surprised I haven’t heard this suggestion — a completely serious one — more often as we Americans review our policy options following the collapse of Republican party support for President Bush, the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld and the release of the Iraq Study Group report. There is widespread agreement that we face no easy options in the Middle East, and I think a strong non-partisan case can be made that a Bush/Cheney resignation is in the best interest of national security. In fact, it could make all the difference for our future.

The Bush/Cheney administration has lost too much credibility with the American people to effectively govern for the next two years. Would any Fortune 500 company in the United States retain a CEO with this kind of track record? Of course not, and as former business executives both George Bush and Dick Cheney must see the simple truth here. Resignation should not be a last resort, nor need it be a disgrace. In fact, resignation may be Bush and Cheney’s best chance to avoid the disgrace of history. They tried, they failed, they moved aside. It would prove that they put the nation’s well-being above their own personal considerations.

How should it happen? Cheney should resign first, and Bush should work with Congress and party leaders to select an acceptable replacement (John McCain? Colin Powell? Neither have perfect records, but both could be trusted to carry out the duties of the office, as could many other experienced Republican politicians). Once the new Vice-President is in office, Bush should follow with his own resignation.

This happened once before, of course. In fact, it’s fascinating to look into an intriguing question — what exactly were the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s exposure in a financial scandal and subsequent resignation in the midst of President Nixon’s Watergate scandal? The subtext was always clear: Agnew was widely disliked and distrusted, and an Agnew Presidency in the wake of Watergate was inconceivable. He had to be cleared out of the way before Nixon could resign (the fact that an Agnew scandal — unrelated to Watergate — was conveniently uncovered at this time seems almost too good to be true).

I’d like to write more about this aspect of the Watergate scandal in a future post here here. There are many interpretations of the Watergate affair, but I’ve always seen the whole mess as the necessary convulsion of a world power stuck in an unwinnable war. It was definitely about Vietnam — specifically, it was about getting us out of Vietnam, which Richard Nixon could not do because he was committed to past promises and beholden to a pro-military power base. Woodward, Bernstein, Segretti and Sirica … in the end, it all amounted to a peaceful coup d’etat that allowed our country to declare defeat in Vietnam and move on.

It’s 2006, and we need our Gerald Ford. Of course, it took many months of agonizing press/legislative hounding before Agnew and Nixon resigned, and I hope we wouldn’t have to work that hard to get rid of our current failed leaders. Perhaps Bush and Cheney could be persuaded by their own associates and trusted advisors to make the move that is clearly in the best interests of the United States of America. Nobody’s asked them yet if they will resign as a fair consequence of their mistakes. That seems like a good first step, so here goes: President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, will you please consider resigning so as to allow the United States of America to best move forward?

It was worth asking, but it will probably require trusted advisers closer to the White House to make a stronger case. Are they ready to ask the President this question? Take a look at this guy’s face and tell me if you see an answer there: