Gonzales: The Texan Who Can't Shoot Straight
Even as Gonzales and his team began to bear a distinct resemblance to the Keystone Cops, Gonzales said he would not quit his job.
"I've overcome a lot of obstacles in my life," said Gonzales, "to become attorney general."
The endless cascade of revelations, accusations, and counterpunches is sapping the resources of the Justice Department leadership and consuming the legislative staff, as Democrats seek a mountain of documents in an effort to paralyze the department and lay the groundwork to make Gonzales a campaign issue in the 2008 congressional and presidential races.
At the end of the week, it was uncertain whether Gonzales could survive the crisis. Some insiders predicted a quick end, pointing to how quickly Sampson bit the dust.
It certainly would be an ignominious end to a political career that had a rocket-speed trajectory for someone who earned his stripes more from loyalty than experience and who spent most of his career as Bush's consigliere, the almost-family outsider so reminiscent of Robert Duvall's brilliant portrayal of Tom Hagen in The Godfather.
"He was someone who was always very grateful to Bush," says Texas appellate lawyer Douglas Alexander, "for basically putting him on a fast track."
A Long History With Bush
Gonzales spent two years as then Governor Bush's general counsel in Austin, then hopscotched briefly to the secretary of state position before Bush named him to the Texas Supreme Court, for which he had little trial or judicial experience. When Bush became president, he named his loyal friend–whom he has called mi abogado (my lawyer)–to the sensitive post of White House counsel. Once again, although Gonzales had no national security experience, he wound up playing a central role in crafting the controversial "war on terror" legal policies.
Bush rewarded him with the attorney general's post after key Republicans refused to support him for a possible Supreme Court seat because of Gonzales's previous stances on abortion.
As to the 110,000-employee Justice Department he runs, at his press conference this week Gonzales admitted being somewhat out of his depth.
"I am not aware of every bit of information that passes through the halls of the Department of Justice," said Gonzales, "nor am I aware of all decisions."
But many of Gonzales's critics didn't buy that explanation. To them the firings represent Gonzales's failure to take that giant mental leap from his old role as Bush's Texas consigliere to top lawman for the United States. The question at hand is whether he is capable of making apolitical decisions that are solely in the best interests of the country, rather than those of his longtime mentor.
"The attorney general is a constitutional role; he's not an adviser to the president," says William Weston, dean of Kaplan University's School of Legal Studies. "There's too close a nexus here politically."
Which is not to say that presidents don't place people with whom they have close ties–even blood ties–in the job. Case in point: Robert Kennedy. And many other attorneys general have been lightning rods in the past, for different reasons.
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