Gonzo resigns

[BlueSkyJaunte]

[Joeaksa]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

I thought the bet was gonna be on how fast Schumer could get on tv after the news broke.

Followed by Nancy and Harry.

[DanielDudley]

If he could have just stopped dating chickens ...

[techweenie]

He'll have the distinction of having risen the highest of any "anchor baby" to date.

[jyl]

Originally Posted by legion

Bush's management style is very different than Clinton's. Whereas Clinton had very public disagreements with his advisors (which the press loved), Bush has very quiet disagreements. I have a feeling that advisors are told when to resign, and it may be for screw-ups that happened years ago--but Bush will reward loyalty with a delayed resignation so that it is not tied to a scandal (making getting another job easier). The press absolutely hates this as they can't stir up a controversy to get someone fired

Not sure I see this. Did the foot-dragging on Rumsfield's resignation prevent him from being blamed for the Iraq mess? Did the too-long defense of Mike Brown prevent him from being damaged by the Katrina mess? Has the repeated praises of Gonzales kept him from being associated with the DOJ mess? No, no, and no.

If Bush really sticks with incompetent and mistake-riddled advisors as long as he does based on the sort of calculation you described, he is being very poorly advised. (Which is sort of the point.)

His refusal to recognize that one of his people has made a hash of things just makes him (Bush) look worse when he finally concedes. It expands the issue from the advisor's poor judgment to Bush's own judgment.

[MichiganMat]

Originally Posted by jyl

Not sure I see this. Did the foot-dragging on Rumsfield's resignation prevent him from being blamed for the Iraq mess? Did the too-long defense of Mike Brown prevent him from being damaged by the Katrina mess? Has the repeated praises of Gonzales kept him from being associated with the DOJ mess? No, no, and no.

If Bush really sticks with incompetent and mistake-riddled advisors as long as he does based on the sort of calculation you described, he is being very poorly advised. (Which is sort of the point.)

His refusal to recognize that one of his people has made a hash of things just makes him (Bush) look worse when he finally concedes. It expands the issue from the advisor's poor judgment to Bush's own judgment.

Thats the rub, there is no difference between the judgement of the advisor and the judgement of Bush, they are one and the same. Everyone near the administration is a "loyal Bushie" first, and civil servant second. Rove saw to it that every wing of government would be put to use for political purposes, no one here is acting alone, its that way by design. Everyone marches in step behind the president, if anyone gets caught they are cut loose and everyone saves face. Unity above country, its what Bushs GOP does best.

[lyon]

I wonder what Gonzales his next appointment will be? Maybe he can practice some of his legal tricks down there in Gitmo of Abu Ghraib. I doubt it though, he will probably stay in the US and fight against the rights of US citizens and Mexicans, etc. etc. and keep lying his way through life. One of the most pathetic characters in the whole administration.

[lyon]

Gonzales was one of the longest-serving members of a group of Texans who came to Washington with Bush more than six years ago at the dawn of a new administration.

Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist, announced his resignation last week. Presidential counselor Dan Bartlett and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel who was forced to withdraw her nomination for the Supreme Court, left earlier in the year.

Gonzales, too, was once considered for the high court, but conservatives never warmed to the idea and he was passed over.

His appointment as attorney general more than two years ago marked the latest in a series of increasingly high-profile positions that Bush entrusted him with.

A Harvard-educated lawyer, Gonzales signed on with Bush in the mid 1990s. He served as general counsel and secretary of state when his patron was governor of Texas, then won an appointment to the state Supreme Court.

As counsel, Gonzales helped get Bush excused from jury duty in 1996, which kept him from having to disclose a drunken driving arrest in Maine in 1976. The episode became public in the final days of the 2000 presidential campaign.

Gonzales was White House counsel during the president's first term, then replaced Ashcroft as attorney general soon after the beginning of the second.

Both jobs gave him key responsibilities in the administration's global war on terror that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In a legal memo in 2002, he contended that Bush had the right to waive anti-torture laws and international treaties that protected prisoners of war. The memo said some of the prisoner-of-war protections contained in the Geneva Conventions were ''quaint'' and that in any event, the treaty did not apply to enemy combatants in the war on terror.

Human rights groups later contended his memo led directly to the abuses exposed in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.

Of greater political concern was the Democratic majority that took office in Congress earlier this year. Leahy soon began investigating the firing of federal prosecutors.