Long term planning at the White House
Who says the White House is no good at long term
planning. It may have missed the boat completely on Iraq, seeing as it failed to
plan for the occupation most qualified experts predicted (and a lot of us
non-experts) and it even failed to plan for the needs of the troops it keeps
supporting. But as it turns out, it developed its campaign against U.S.
Attorneys over the long term. According to the Times the campaign against the
U.S. Attorney was initiated by Harriet Meiers (or so the White House would have
us now believe) in early 2005. Her idea was to fire them all, but the Department
of Justice was against that-not because it would be wrong but because it would
be hard to fill all those positions quickly enough. Besides, at that point,
replacements would have required Congressional approval. So, brilliant long
range planners that they are, the White House sneaked (I still prefer "snuck")
in the change in the Patriot Act allowing replacements without Congressional
input.
This entire thing was not the work of a moment; it was the result of over a year of planning.
Fortunately for America (at least in this instance), this incident reveals that although the Bushies can in fact plan in advance, they are incapable of adapting to changed circumstances. That's no surprise, given our experience in Iraq, but this situation illustrates the problem in spades. Despite the fact that they lost the election, it apparently never occurred to the Bushies that going ahead with their plans might not be such a good idea, given the fact that they no longer had the spineless Specter to contend with at the Judiciary Committee. Had he been chairman he might have objected at first, but the ultimate result would have been a bill requiring Bush to fire any U.S. Attorney that he didn't like. Specter, by the way, would have provided more oversight than the House, where the entire subject would simply have been ignored. Rove, et. al, having gotten used to doing as they pleased, were unable to appreciate the rather basic fact that political realities had changed. Rove may be Bush's brain, but it clearly doesn't take much to top the original.
Unfortunately, and ironically, Bush still controls the justice Department, so it's unlikely there will be any perjury prosecutions against Gonzales or his aides.
Another richly ironic aspect of this case is the fact that Republicans were upset because the prosecutors failed to bring politically motivated cases against Democrats alleging, of all things, vote fraud, particularly in New Mexico and Washington. They couldn't understand why a lack of evidence should stand in the way of prosecuting Democrats for crimes that they, themselves, committed in plain sight without penalty, the lone exception being the phone jamming scandal in New Hampshire. (As Paul Krugman notes, that particular case may have been "slow walked", and it may also have been pursued only because the Democrat's civil suit made it politically impossible to ignore it). It's merely another example of their monumental arrogance that they felt privileged to push trumped up vote fraud cases against Democrats.
This entire thing was not the work of a moment; it was the result of over a year of planning.
Fortunately for America (at least in this instance), this incident reveals that although the Bushies can in fact plan in advance, they are incapable of adapting to changed circumstances. That's no surprise, given our experience in Iraq, but this situation illustrates the problem in spades. Despite the fact that they lost the election, it apparently never occurred to the Bushies that going ahead with their plans might not be such a good idea, given the fact that they no longer had the spineless Specter to contend with at the Judiciary Committee. Had he been chairman he might have objected at first, but the ultimate result would have been a bill requiring Bush to fire any U.S. Attorney that he didn't like. Specter, by the way, would have provided more oversight than the House, where the entire subject would simply have been ignored. Rove, et. al, having gotten used to doing as they pleased, were unable to appreciate the rather basic fact that political realities had changed. Rove may be Bush's brain, but it clearly doesn't take much to top the original.
Unfortunately, and ironically, Bush still controls the justice Department, so it's unlikely there will be any perjury prosecutions against Gonzales or his aides.
Another richly ironic aspect of this case is the fact that Republicans were upset because the prosecutors failed to bring politically motivated cases against Democrats alleging, of all things, vote fraud, particularly in New Mexico and Washington. They couldn't understand why a lack of evidence should stand in the way of prosecuting Democrats for crimes that they, themselves, committed in plain sight without penalty, the lone exception being the phone jamming scandal in New Hampshire. (As Paul Krugman notes, that particular case may have been "slow walked", and it may also have been pursued only because the Democrat's civil suit made it politically impossible to ignore it). It's merely another example of their monumental arrogance that they felt privileged to push trumped up vote fraud cases against Democrats.
Posted: Tuesday - March 13, 2007 at 09:22 PM
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Published On: Apr 17, 2007 07:20 PM
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Published On: Apr 17, 2007 07:20 PM