The appearance of contradiction

By Mustang Bobby

From The New York Times:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senior advisers discussed the plan to remove seven United States attorneys at a meeting last Nov. 27, 10 days before the dismissals were carried out, according to a Justice Department calendar entry disclosed Friday.

The previously undisclosed meeting appeared to contradict Mr. Gonzales’s previous statements about his knowledge of the dismissals. He said at a news conference on March 13 that he had not participated in any discussions about the removals, but knew in general that his aides were working on personnel changes involving United States attorneys.

Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, told reporters on Friday evening that Mr. Gonzales’s attendance at the hourlong meeting was not inconsistent with his past remarks.

“He tasked his chief of staff to carry this plan forward,” Ms. Scolinos said. “He did not participate in the selection of the U.S. attorneys to be fired. He did sign off on the final list.”

For an administration that proclaimed oh so loudly and piously that they would do everything they possibly could to restore "honor and integrity" to governing and scorned the machinations and the obfuscations of the Clinton administration, the Bushies certainly do seem to be doing their best to prove that they are better than the previous administration: they obfuscate better, they manipulate the news better, and they parse their words to the fine point that even defining what "is" is now sounds clunky and amateurish by comparison to the knife-edge of delineating whether or not the Attorney General actually "met" with his people over the dismissal of the eight U.S. attorneys.

David Brooks brought up a valid point last night in his roundtable discussion with Mark Shields on PBS's News Hour; this in itself is not a scandal that will bring down the presidency of George W. Bush. It probably ranks up there with Iran-Contra, and it certainly is more important than one man, one woman, and a cigar, but it's not on the level of Mr. Nixon directly ordering the FBI to stay out of an investigation. Be that as it may, it does fit into the pattern that this administration has shown of putting politics and partisan loyalty above the goals and objectives of good government, which is to serve the needs of all the people, not just the ones who voted for your guy, and that, coupled with the ruthless manner in which they deal with their opponents -- or "enemies," as former (whew) House Majority Leader Tom DeLay called them -- makes one extremely suspicious of the intentions of this administration. They've already demonstrated a cavalier attitude towards the truth in putting forth their reasons for going to war in Iraq, and they have clearly shown that they do not appreciate -- or even understand -- the consequences that come from such behavior. They have been shameless in their attempts to propagandize their points of view to the degree that they violate their own standards in putting out packaged information via bought-and-paid-for colleagues in print and on TV. As if they didn't trust that people like Armstrong Williams weren't already doing enough toadying for them, they had to pad it with a little cash just to be sure.

Mr. Brooks also said that this scandal provides a relief for the Democrats because it takes them away from the hard task of governing; who wants to spend hours laboring over a budget bill or some other such boring stuff such as ending the war in Iraq when there's breaking news about whether or not Karl Rove will testify under oath before the House Judiciary Committee? But that's not really fair. If the Congress of the United States allows the kind of behind-the-scenes political manipulations to go on without some kind of examination, then they would be contradicting what the people of this country voted for last November. The electorate didn't have a chance to replace the president, so they did the next best thing; they voted in Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and now they are expecting them to do their job, which includes bringing some accountability and oversight to the table. As Sen. Boxer (D-CA) noted the other day when she shut down the rants of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) during the testimony of former Vice President Al Gore, elections have consequences.

The wishful assumption on the part of Mr. Brooks and other Republicans is that the Democrats are incapable of multitasking. This scandal can prove that theory wrong as well as prove that the Democrats can do the bidding of the people. If the Democrats were to let this scandal in the Department of Justice go by without holding the Attorney General and all the others involved accountable, the appearance of contradiction would be on them. That, in itself, would be a scandal.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)