March 19, 2007 – Page 846
Of all the scandals that have increasingly bedeviled
Beyond the revelation of that conversation, the fact that at least three of Bush’s longest-serving and closest confidants are at the center of this dispute suggests a narrative that, unlike other administration troubles, cannot be spun entirely away from any presidential accountability. Not only have Gonzales, senior adviser Karl Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers worked at Bush’s side since his Texas days, but in Washington they’ve been seen, as much as any other aides, as the personal extensions of the president.
Press secretary Tony Snow, while acknowledging Bush’s role, did his best to characterize the president as having only a “passing” interest in the December firing of the seven federal prosecutors, adamantly insisting that he never complained to Gonzales about specific prosecutors.
But given Bush’s involvement — he ultimately signed off on the dismissals — it became incumbent on him to try to choke off unhappiness with the White House’s handling of the matter. And he tried at a news conference last week in Mexico, in which he basically asserted that he has the power to do whatever he wants with the officials he chose to run the Justice Department’s 94 regional field offices. “U.S. attorneys and others serve at the pleasure of the president,” Bush said. “Past administrations have removed U.S. attorneys. It’s their right to do so.”
His legal standing seems firm, but he’s on far shakier political ground, because Capitol Hill Democrats are eager to add this episode to the others that have helped drive down Bush’s popularity in recent weeks. His critics are searching the law books for illegalities in White House dealings with prosecutors, but it looks like they will have to be content with trying to make a case that the dismissals were a politically motivated abuse of raw power. Unless it turns out that Gonzales or others in the administration lied to Congress, there seems little to dispel the view that, while “mistakes were made,” as Gonzales admitted last week, no crimes were committed.
The president’s defenders seized upon the apparent lack of criminality to dismiss the debate as not worth having. But Bush and his team don’t have to be malfeasant to be held accountable or subjected to vigorous debate for possibly trying to manipulate federal prosecutors to do their political bidding — even if they had every right to do so. It would set a dramatically low standard for performance to argue that presidents can do whatever they want, so long as they do not break the law.
While the legal and political fallout is debatable, there is no question that, at a minimum, this matter calls into question whether the Bush administration has completely lost its once-golden touch in managing the news. Indeed, it was the White House press office that unwittingly revved up Washington’s outrage machine. As the president headed to Latin America for what the White House had hoped would be “the big story” for Bush last week, a press aide responded to news accounts of Rove’s involvement in at least one prosecutor firing by acknowledging that the adviser had discussed potential dismissals with the Justice Department. More revelations, such as Miers’ ultimately abandoned plan to replace all the prosecutors, emerged from the White House while the president and his entourage were a hemisphere away.
Even the mention of Rove’s involvement is sufficient to fuel suspicion of political overreaching, but in this case it was the first direct evidence of White House entanglement in a dispute that had previously been confined to the Justice Department. The release of e-mails proving White House involvement, along with the admission of the president’s discussion with Gonzales, ensured that this story would overshadow Bush’s trip.
At his news conference in Mexico, Bush could not contain his frustration at how the prosecutor story was distracting so much attention from his trip, though he allowed that it was unavoidable. “This issue was mishandled to the point now where you’re asking me questions about it in Mexico, which is fine,” Bush told reporters. “If I were you, I’d ask the same question.”
The best-case scenario for the president would be for this to be seen as something merely “mishandled” by underlings, but there seems every chance that this will be the unusual case where Bush himself continues to face troubling questions about how he personally handled things.
Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.