THE SCANDAL OF A NON-SCANDAL

This flap over the Bush Administration firing eight U.S. attorneys is mind-boggling.  Why?  The mendacity of congressional Democrats who will say anything to manufacture a scandal, and the incompetence of Bush and his minions in letting them get away with it.

U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president.  The president can fire any U.S. attorney at any time for any reason.  The only legal restraint upon this power of the president is that the purpose of his dismissal cannot be to obstruct an investigation, prosecution, or civil action.  Even then his purpose has to be malign.  The president has the authority -- indeed, the duty -- to curtail law enforcement actions he thinks are improper, ill-founded, or otherwise not in the public interest.  Because, in the absence of any credible allegations, Bush fired no U.S. attorney to obstruct justice, there was nothing afoul in the law in doing so.

In want of a smoking gun, the Democrats are howling to moon that the firings are political.  Of course they are!  Because U.S. attorneys are political appointees, by definition their coming and going is political.  More than that, it is well within the prerogative of the president to boot a U.S. attorney who is not adhering to his law enforcement priorities.  After all, the president is elected by the people.  That gives political legitimacy to his law enforcement policy and the management of the officials he appoints to execute it.  If the president says, for example, that the prosecution of drug lords is a top priority and one of his U.S. attorneys ignores that directive to pursue inside traders instead, there is nothing improper in the president booting him.

So there is no scandal.  Yet, Bush on down act like they are guilty of something.  Only belatedly and with little force has Bush defended his right to fire the eight U.S. attorneys.  He hems and haws on cooperation with the Senate investigation.  He talks as though he really didn't have much to do with the decision.  He regrets that mistakes were made.  Attorney General Gonzalez follows the same line, while his staff counsel says she'll take the Fifth Amendment in her appearance before the Senate.  While the Democrats fabricate a scandal, the Bushies fabricate a guilty response to it.  This is not just lousy gamesmanship.  It is irresponsible.  We're at war, and Bush doesn't have the luxury of squandering his administration's credibility in sideshow spats with congressional Democrats.

Indeed, Bush is obligated to make the Democrats pay a heavy political price for inventing a scandal when there is deadly serious business to be done.  What he had to do in response the Democrats' ill-willed gambit to undermine his presidency was to call their bluff:  [1] Tell them to go to hell, there will be no cooperation from his administration in a pointless and frivolous congressional investigation; [2] clearly defend to the public his power to fire the U.S. attorneys; [3] articulate the refusal or inability of these appointees to carry out his agenda as the reason for doing so; [4] chastise the Democrats for wasting time over nonsense when the country has a war to fight; and finally [5] put the challenge to them to stop him from running the country to play partisan politics.

That would have put the onus on the Democrats to either drop the matter or escalate it in the face of their likely ultimate failure to accomplish anything concrete.  If they did escalate, they risked appearing like soulless partisans whose only objective is destruction of a political opponent for no reason other than his destruction.  Instead Bush and his administration have waffled for fear of drawing a clear line in the sand between his agenda for the country and the Democrats'.  Why should that be?  I must wonder if the reason is that Bush and his advisors are so confused as to think that drawing a line to marshal a defense against a purely partisan assault is itself a purely partisan ploy.  If so, a president who aspires to be a nice guy would never want to appear so venal.  However, by playing to appearances in this sorry non-scandal, Bush has cast the worst appearance upon himself and his administration.

Comments

[doctor(logic)]

Bill,

Two questions:

1) Your post would have us believe that it's only the Democrats in Congress who have been concerned with the administration's behavior in the matter of the attorney firings. This is misleading as Republican politicians have also asked for Gonzales' removal. Are we to believe that the Republicans who are outraged by this scandal are out to nail a Republican president for political reasons?

2) Is it appropriate, in your opinion, that the executive branch should utterly politicize the justice department?

For example, as I understand it, starting with John Ashcroft, the Bush administration changed DOJ hiring practices so that career (non-appointee) staffers were hired by political appointees instead of other career staffers. Does that sound appropriate to you? Should each administration dip its political fingers into the bureaucracy as far as possible? It is quite clear that Bush replaced the attorneys not for cause (their reviews were excellent) but because they found wrongdoing among Republican lawmakers rather than Democratic ones.

Now, I'm convinced that laws have been broken in this affair and the ensuing cover-up. But suppose that no laws had been broken. Was the administration's policy at the DOJ right, or merely legal?

I'm sorry, but the politicization occurred well before this scandal broke. And if the people and Congress say they have a problem with this sort of government corruption, then there's a real problem with it.

[Bill]

Hello, Doctor Logic.

>>Was the administration's policy at the DOJ right, or merely legal?<<

Frankly I see nothing wrong with a president firing U.S. Attorneys. It probably should happen more often to keep them on their toes. Of course, any such firing is a political act, but then the U.S. Attorney is a political office.

As to whether or not a president is abusing his authority to hire and fire U.S. Attorneys, there are two checks on that. The first, as I mentioned in my article, is legal. If the president is obstructing justice by firing a U.S. Attorney, he has broken the law. The second is political. If the president is acting capriciously or otherwise violating the public trust, Congress can impeach and try him.

Seeing that there is NO evidence of obstruction and that the Congress has NO intention of impeaching Bush for the firings, I have concluded that the Democrats are engaged in nothing but frivolous partisan politics with their hue and cry over the matter, and the Bushies have pathetically played into their hands.

(By the way, as for some of the weak-sister Republicans joining the Democrats in this nonsense, they are unprincipled. But then it is understandable that rats will leave a sinking ship, and when the captain is doing nothing to keep it afloat, I don't suppose he has encouraged loyalty.)

Regards, Bill