The One With Aldacron

In light of the brouhaha surrounding the dismissal of a handful of federal prosecutors, Alberto Gonzales has “acknowledged that mistakes were made…” That’s all well and good, but is he going to take responsibility for it? Don’t hold your breath:

On Tuesday afternoon, at a news conference in an ornate chamber adjacent to his office, Mr. Gonzales promised to “find out what went wrong here,” even as he insisted he had had no direct knowledge of how his staff had decided on the dismissals.

In Korea, and actually in several Asian countries, when anyone in a position of authority finds themselves in the middle of even the most minor of scandals, they rarely hesitate to accept responsibility and resign for their failure. Even when the subordinates do all of the monkeying around behind their leader’s back and he truly had no knowledge, it is regarded as his failure simply because he didn’t catch it and put an end to it. In other words, the boss is ultimately responsible for his staff and if he isn’t in control then he isn’t doing his job.

I’m not saying that we should adopt that attitude to the same extent in the West. Asians, in my mind anyway, carry the concept a bit too far. It’s hard to know who holds some of the top political posts in Korea unless you follow the local news on a daily basis — they resign so frequently it’s a wonder any work gets done at all. But they do have the bit about responsibility right.

In the United States, it’s not uncommon for extremists on one side or the other to call for a public official to step down over a particular controversy. But we don’t tend to hear a majority call for someone’s head unless the offense is quite serious. Yet, we do, to a large extent, expect people in positions of authority to be accountable for the actions of their subordinates (at least, in relation to their work). If a corporate executive walks through a particular department and finds that half the staff are browsing the web or playing games, who is he going to lay into — the frivolous staff members or the department manager? When he’s chewing out the manager, is the manager going to get away with saying that he wasn’t aware they were doing it? Will he get away with blaming Bob from accounting for starting a MySpace or Second Life craze in the office?

Managers in most companies aren’t going to get away with finger pointing and excuses. Yet, such behavior has become par for the course in the ongoing Freak Show that is the Bush administration. No one in a position of responsibility seems to ever want to take responsibility for screwing up. It was three years after the Iraq invasion before Bush even admitted to any mistakes (and in spite of that still tried to justify the invasion). Gonzales, after insisting that there was no wrongdoing, at least finally admits that mistakes were made. Unfortunately, he’s taking the same approach Bush and other administration officials continue to take when they get busted — it’s not my fault.

So while Gonzales is avoiding culpability with the “I didn’t know” defense, Bush is taking the “finger-pointing” approach at which he has become quite adept during his six years of denial and refusal to be held accountable for anything. There have been a lot of questions about how involved the White House was with the dismissals:

Questions about whether the dismissals were politically motivated have been swirling since January. But they reached a fever pitch on Tuesday with disclosures by the White House that Mr. Bush had spoken directly with Mr. Gonzales to pass on concerns from Republican lawmakers, among them Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, about the way certain prosecutors were handling cases of voter fraud.

Of course, Bush can’t be seen to have any responsibility for this:

But inside the White House, aides to the president, including Mr. Rove and Joshua B. Bolten, the chief of staff, were said to be increasingly concerned that the controversy could damage Mr. Bush.

“They’re taking it seriously,” said the other of the two Republicans
who spoke about the White House’s relationship with Mr. Gonzales. “I
think Rove and Bolten believe there is the potential for erosion of the
president’s credibility on this issue.”

Excuse me a moment while I laugh my ass off. At some point, there’s a threshold where no matter how much mud surfaces, the Decider will be covered in so much of it that more won’t make a difference. I’m quite certain we crossed it some time ago. And, come on! In what world does Bush have any credibility left to erode? Then again, we all know that the Bush White House exists in a reality different from our own, so apparently they feel like damage control is warranted. So Bush put the ol’ finger up and pointed it at the most acceptable goat he could find to scape:

The White House took the unusual step of having Mr. Bartlett conduct a
hurried briefing with reporters in Mérida, Mexico. He said the
president had “all the confidence in the world” in Mr. Gonzales and
traced the idea for the dismissals to Ms. Miers, saying she had raised
the question of whether the Justice Department should clean house in
Mr. Bush’s second term, as is common when a new president takes office.

“What Harriet Miers was doing was taking a look and floating an idea to
say, ‘Hey, should we treat the second term very similar to the way we
treat a first term?’ ” Mr. Bartlett said.

There ya go. It’s no fault of the President. It’s all on Harriet Miers, who conveniently is no longer a part of the administration. It’s been repeatedly mentioned in the news that when a new administration moves in to the White House, they traditionally replace all or most of the federal prosecutors. So now it’s all down to Harriet Miers for wondering aloud if they should do the same for the second term. And I can’t help but comment on the “all the confidence in the world” bit. Here’s an exercise for the reader: do a bit of research to find out how many people in whom Bush had “all the confidence in the world” are still serving in his administration. I’ll give you two clues to get you started: Brownie and Rummy.

So back to Harriet Miers. If we accept that her initial idea led to the firing of the 8 prosecutors, it doesn’t account for the fact that Gonzales rejected the idea outright, or that the Justice department initially cited poor performance as the reason for ousting said attorneys. Haven’t we seen this dog & pony show before?

And let’s not forget Karl Rove. In typical Rove fashion, he’s avoiding answering to his role in the affair by, well, not answering:

Mr. Bartlett said it was “highly unlikely” that Mr. Rove would testify
publicly to Congress but added, “That doesn’t mean we won’t find other
ways to try to share that information.”

What’s he going to do when they subpoena him? I suppose it will be a private hearing, if he bothers to acknowledge it at all.

Really, is this anything new? It’s more of the same, just as Kerry promised us back in 2004. More failure to accept responsibility, more blaming others for failure, more attempting to spin the message put out by the media. The only difference is that this time, they don’t get a free pass from a Republican Congress. There’s going to be oversight this time. And it’s bipartisan, as even Republicans are quite miffed by the issue. Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma sums it up quite succinctly:

Mr. Coburn called the dismissals “idiocy on the part of the administration.”

Finally, a Republican I can relate to. Well, not so much, but at least on this issue.

Technorati Tags: federal prosecutors, Bush, Alberto Gonzales, Justice Department, Attorney General, Karl Rove, Harriet Miers