Gonzales must go

The attorney general's handling of the questionable dismissal of federal prosecutors is the last straw. He is not competent

Alberto Gonzales has been a friend of President Bush's for a long time. Gonzales was White House counsel before becoming attorney general, and at one time was said to be a leading candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court. He was Texas secretary of state when Bush was governor. Bush named him to that state's Supreme Court.

But Gonzales has not handled his job as attorney general well, and problems of late underline the need for his departure as a step toward restoring public confidence in the Justice Department's leadership. Last week, he and FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged that the FBI had used the USA Patriot Act to improperly and illegally obtain personal information on Americans.

Now, the firing of several U.S. attorneys -- federal prosecutors -- seems to have been motivated at least to a degree by improperly partisan politics. There are signs that some in the White House wanted the presidential appointees out because they were seen as not pushing hard enough in corruption investigations and voter fraud cases that might have been embarrassing to Democrats. Or, they might have trod on too many Republican toes.

The blame game

Of this controversy, Gonzales has said that "mistakes were made" but has vowed to stay in office. His office seems to lay the blame for the unsavory perception created by the firings squarely on communications between Gonzales' just-resigned former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, another long-time Bush aide. (She resigned in January.)

The story as reported by The New York Times goes that Miers, who was once nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court by Bush but withdrew after a brouhaha over her lack of qualifications, asked Sampson in early 2005 if all 93 U.S. attorneys could be removed.

That was judged to be over the top. But then, the president talked to Gonzales about complaints from Republicans that some U.S. attorneys weren't aggressive enough on voter fraud cases. (In view of the firings, that sounds a little like code for "going after Democrats who want to vote.") E-mails from Sampson to Miers during most of 2006 included things like "rankings" of federal prosecutors and plans to fire seven of them. Another had been removed last summer and replaced with a friend of the president's White House political guru, Karl Rove. In December the seven were fired.

Mistakes were made? If all this happened below Gonzales, then he's a lousy boss. If it happened with his knowledge, given that it had connections all the way to the White House, then he doesn't understand the difference between being counsel to the president, an advisory job that is partisan by its nature, and attorney general, the country's chief law enforcement officer and a person who must uphold ideals of fairness and impartiality.

Anything for an edge?

Supporters of Gonzales have cited the fact that to be a U.S. attorney is to serve at the president's pleasure in a political appointment. It's true that other presidents, upon taking office, have removed U.S. attorneys of different political parties. But the politics apparently involved in this round of firings raises serious concerns about what the White House's intentions were -- namely, that the dismissals had more to do with gaining political leverage than, as claimed by those around Gonzales, addressing issues of competence.

Did the president's political advisers figure to seek all the advantages they could find, even if it met messing around in the Justice Department? That's surely what it looks like, and the White House has built a shaky explanation that is fair game for careful scrutiny by Congress. Lawmakers from both parties have expressed understandable frustration with both the administration's conduct and its initial failure to present an accurate account of how the prosecutors came to be axed.

Gonzales should have protected the public's interest first and last, though he himself might have fallen out of favor on Pennsylvania Ave. Instead, he has looked more like a political hack trying to get the job done for his friend the president. Bush is known to value loyalty, but here loyalty was excessive and misplaced. Considering the sorry litany of missteps that have occurred on Gonzales' watch at a department with crucially important powers and responsibilities, Bush should seek his resignation immediately.