EDITORIAL: Isolated Support: The President Gives the Attorney General Two Thumbs Up

By The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio

Apr. 22–President Bush reinforced the impression of a “decider” dismayingly isolated at the White House. On Thursday, his spokeswoman relayed that the president “was pleased with the attorney general’s testimony” before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She reiterated that Alberto Gonzales has “the full confidence of the president.”

Did the president watch the performance, a bungling, amateurish Gonzales further eroding his credibility as he tried to explain the Justice Department sackings of eight U.S. attorneys?

Did he catch Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican, telling Gonzales: “The reality is that your characterization of your participation is just significantly, if not totally, at variance with the facts”?

Or Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, concluding: “You ought to suffer the consequences that these others have suffered, and I believe that the best way to put this behind us is your resignation”?

Gonzales wanted senators to believe that as atrocious as the process was (the attorney general says he acted on the dismissals without reviewing any criteria or documents about the firings), the decisions were sound. All of it prompted Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, to observe: “But at the end of the day, you said something that struck me, that sometimes it just came down to these were not the right people at the right time. If I applied that standard to you, what would you say?”

The attorney general answered by contending that he continues to be effective: “We’ve done some great things.” In other words, heckuva job.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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