Editorial, 08/05/2007 - Impeach Gonzales? No, let him twist ...

Democratic cries for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ head have turned from strident demands for his resignation to deep-voiced bellowing about impeachment.

A Cabinet member can, indeed be impeached; same for “all civil officers of the United States,” according to the Constitution. But it’s been 130-odd years since such a thing happened: Secretary of War William Belknap, part of the corrupt Republican administration of Ulysses Grant, was the kind of kickback-taker who’d do many a New Mexico politician proud. He skedaddled before the House of Representatives could issue its articles of impeachment, but the process went on; the Senate, however, couldn’t come up with the two-thirds vote it would have taken to convict him.

Gonzales, testifying last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, lied like a rug about his bizarre efforts to intimidate predecessor John Danforth into keeping a warrantless terrorist-surveillance program going.

Fellow Republicans on the committee were outraged — and embarrassed to tears. Among Democrats, self-righteousness ran rampant — if not over Gonzales’ brutish behavior at Danforth’s hospital bed, then over other Democrat-like doings, such as the basely political firings of New Mexican David Iglesias and eight other U.S. attorneys. To the extent that some of those firings amount to obstruction of a prosecution, a case could be made that Gonzales is a felon. Or is he merely a political hack doing what people of that ilk have done for the past couple of hundred years?

Rep. Jay Inslee of Washington is leading the charge to impeach Gonzales, declaring that “never in the history of Congress have so many deceits and half-truths been purveyed on so many by so few people.”

Wow — talk about hyperbole ...

Among a dozen other representatives joining Inslee for his declaration was Northern New Mexico’s Tom Udall, who almost kindly understated that “this particular attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, has lost his bearings.” Maybe he meant ball bearings — the kind kids use to play marbles.

We hope what Udall et al. are really doing is merely soap boxing about a truly poor public servant. However awful Gonzales has been, he’s now discredited to the point that he’s unlikely to do much more damage to the country who chose his boss — twice — as president.

What he can do, however, is inflict all kinds of injuries upon a presidency which hasn’t come near getting its just deserts — and upon the president’s party.

And that’s why the Democrats should love having him in office — at least for the next 15 months: Gonzales, as long as President Bush hangs onto him, is a walking, talking model of the mendacity America has suffered since 2001. If the Dems can’t cook up advertisements portraying the depravity of their opponents, featuring the feckless attorney general, they’re in worse shape than we’ve feared. Whoever their nominee is, she or he can benefit from partisan reminders of Gonzales’ assaults on human rights and his low character to boot.

It would take the House of Representatives a few months to build a case for impeachment; time better spent repairing the damage done by preceding Congresses. And even if a case could be made and a bipartisan force gathered to try it in the Senate, we don’t like the precedent these proceedings might set: Would impeachment become a trend this Congress, or a Republican one, would apply to the weaker members of an opposition president’s cabinet?

Congressional Democrats should borrow a page from that Republican rascal, the late ex-Santa Fean John Ehrlichman. He’s the one who, amid the heat of Watergate, advocated a delay in Patrick Gray’s nomination as FBI director: Leave him, said Ehrlichman, “twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.”

Alberto Gonzales already is on the job — but the longer and slower he twists, the better our country, in the long run, might be served.