This afternoon Ben Craw and I were working through the discussions of Alberto Gonzales on the Sunday shows for tomorrow’s episode of TPMtv. And there’s no mistaking that the tide has turned again on the AG.
But why? Little less than two week’s ago Gonzales appeared confident of his job as he recapped his series of dodges and lies before the House Judiciary Committee.
So what changed?
It’s not a difficult question to answer: James Comey.
At one level, that’s understandable and as it should be. Comey’s narrative of events back in March 2004 was a riveting example of the special mix of sycophancy, lickspittlism and lawlessness that is at the heart of Alberto Gonzales’s tenure as Attorney General.
But does it really tell us more about the man than we already knew? Or is there more that we really needed to know to know he had to go? I think the answer to that question is ‘no’. The bare facts of the ICU showdown had been reported some time ago. And more to the point, incredibly damning information has already come out about Gonzales’s role manipulating the federal prosecutorial system to advance the narrow interests of the Republican party and encourage fraudulent indictments.
The Comey story is extremely important. And it deserves all the attention it’s getting. At the same time though it shows the outsized importance granted to stories told as gripping first-person narratives. The point is too rooted in human nature to criticize it. It is what it is. One might as well criticize the rain.
But the point still deserves mentioning: What we’ve already learned about Gonzales is just as bad as the Comey story. We already knew more than enough to know he was morally and ethically unfit for the job.
