Misdirected 0
If a nail is bent, do you blame the hammer or the one wielding the hammer?
Abu Gonzales is only a hammer, as his incoherent testimony before the Senate Judicicary Committee showed. He suffered from a clear case of CRS.
That, of course, does not mean that Abu is qualified to run one of the most important cabinet-level departments of the United States government. His letting himself be used is clear proof that he is not.
To find out who thinks that United States Attorneys should be judged on their political, rather than their legal merits, we need to know who was wielding the hammer. Then we will know who thinks politics trumps justice.
Dan Froomkin lays it out.
But Gonzales didn’t add fuel to the fire, either. It was a classic stalling maneuver. Gonzales was entirely unable to explain to anyone’s satisfaction why those U.S. attorneys were fired — although he comically insisted that he was sure he had made the decision himself, and that it was the right one.
It’s no surprise, therefore, that President Bush expressed delight over Gonzales’s testimony — even as some White House aides privately told CNN that he hadn’t helped himself at all.
“President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General’s testimony today,” the White House announced last night. And this morning on CNN, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino was in full spin mode, trying to make the argument that the hearing “proved, once again, that there is no credible allegation of anything improper happening or any wrongdoing.”
Today’s news coverage is appropriately blistering, but in its focus on the public clown show, and on what was said — rather than on what was not said — it is not as incisive as today’s commentary. So I’ll start with that.
