Vast swaths of the Republic can no longer stomach George W. Bush, largely, it would seem, because of the petulant, even adolescent defiance that defines him. Democrats and independents across the board, in addition to growing chunks of Republicans and even the normally complacent media have simply had enough.
Most of this wintery discontent stems from the president's immutable stubbornness on the Iraq war. He occasionally flashes some seeming modification -- be it military, political, or diplomatic -- but it always, and soon, shows itself as nothing more than p.r. prestidigitation. He's intent on slogging it out till 2009 with the same ole, same ole, and the more he's reprimanded, the more he digs in.
But, it seems to me, it's the farce of Alberto Gonzales' clinging tenure -- front-page news earlier this week and again today -- that more pointedly epitomizes Bush's juvenile combativeness.
With respect to Iraq he has at least some thin shred of defense. No matter how we got there, no matter how egregiously his administration manipulated us into it, the monstrous problem of leaving intelligently remains. Even some of Bush's harshest critics concede that staying longer might help prevent the worst bloodbath since Rawanda, and leaving sooner might be dumber than having gone in to begin with. I don't happen to agree; nevertheless the argument is out there, and Bush has that cushion.
But as for his keeping Alberto at Justice? There lies presidential behavior of the wholly indefensible -- and of the purely, petulantly defiant. The attorney general's continued tenure has not the slightest justification or even a trifling of straightfaced defenders.
Gonzales' bedazzling exercises in proving his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt before anyone could possibly presume his innocence are on routine, Capitol Hill display. They have become a national joke. At Judiciary Committee hearings the country's top law enforcement officer sits and blinks and evades and grins and in general makes a deliberate ass of himself, as well as any notion of impartial justice.
He either knows nothing or has already testified to it or it's under investigation so he can't. Whatever's left is merely blatant obfuscation, which even his aides are forced to concede is confusion-causing "linguistic parsing."
Not even Donald Rumsfeld was so universally despised and distrusted by oversight members of Congress. This week alone Senator John D. Rockefeller IV bluntly labeled Gonzales as "untruthful." Senator Charles Schumer told him to his face: "You’re deceiving us."
Senator Russ Feingold was "appalled" at Gonzales' latest testimony, which he charitably characterized as "misleading at best," and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said he harbored "exactly the same perception."
The Senate Judiciary Committee's chairman, Pat Leahy, summed up virtually everyone's best judgment with, "I just don’t trust you," and even the committee's ranking Republican, Arlen Specter, slapped Gonzales with the outspoken threat that his "credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable." For a sitting attorney general, actionable = impeachment.
Yet Congressional scorn should be heaped less on Alberto -- who is just a hapless button man -- and more on his benefactor, whose executive blessing of this farce transcends even his contempt for the Constitution. It goes deeper. It goes to who George really is -- merely a petulant child who won't tolerate being told what's permissible, what's not, and who his playmates can be. And if you try, he'll dig into petulant defiance even more.
On the other hand, I'd love to see Congress get "actionable" -- not so much to rid us of Alberto, who'd only be replaced by more button-man haplessness, but so we can all watch Master George throw public tantrums and chew the carpet. Lord knows we could use the comic relief.