MERCIFULLY ending his thoroughly pathetic tenure as America's chief prosecutor, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally resigned on Monday. His resignation came as a surprise, but not because he hadn't made any mistakes. It was unexpected because he had made so many mistakes -- big, Constitution-threatening mistakes. Nevertheless he still retained President Bush's support and remained attorney general. The sorry tale of Alberto Gonzales highlighted all of the Bush administration's greatest shortcomings: cronyism, incompetence and a stubborn resistance to any criticism.
Gonzales was a perfect example of what the attorney general ought not to be -- a slavish, unquestioning extension of the president's power. This is not to say that the office is independent of the president; the attorney general is a political appointee of the executive branch who is meant to follow the elected president's priorities. But the position requires a excellent grasp of the law and Constitution and, especially in the age of terrorism, an ability to explain the Justice Department's actions to Congress. Gonzales managed to turn the firing of eight U.S. attorneys -- an easily defensible, if unusual, exercise of presidential prerogative -- into an enduring scandal by giving contradictory and confusing testimony to the Senate. His complete inadequateness for the position was even more obvious during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting in January of 2007, when he denied that the Constitution guarantees citizens the right of habeas corpus.
Pundits typically blame public frustration over the Iraq occupation for Bush's low approval ratings, which have been consistently below 40 percent during the past year. But Bush's worst failure as President has been his tendency to run the executive branch like a third-world dictator, prizing personal loyalty over professional competence. After a series of good nominations during his first term, he has picked underqualified cronies for the highest government offices and has refused to remove officials long after it was obvious that they needed to go.
Whether out of misplaced loyalty to friends or a stubborn refusal to allow outside critics to influence his decisions, Bush has repeatedly made the same sorts of mistakes in his hiring practices. In addition to retaining Gonzales despite his obvious inadequacies, the past few years have seen Bush nominate Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court in spite of a lack of judicial experience and continue to support Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after his military philosophy had failed to bring peace to Iraq. Worst of all was the appointment of Michael Brown, a lawyer with no disaster-management experience, to be the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brown's incompetence was revealed to the world after he grossly mishandled Hurricane Katrina relief, failing to understand the situation and bring aid to suffering people.
The most telling feature common to all four of these cases was that the criticism was bipartisan. Of course, opposition parties are always eager to criticize the President, and so congressional Democrats' comments were nothing out of the ordinary. But many conservative commentators were just as disapproving of Rumsfeld, Miers, Brown and Gonzales as their liberal counterparts, and their reactions were not politics as usual. Nor were they only out of a frustration that Bush was embarrassing the Republican party.
Conservatives felt betrayed that Bush was ignoring the advice of those who had supported him and wished him success; more than anything, they were tired of his failure to learn from past mistakes.
Bush has infuriated conservatives not so much because of policy mistakes, but because of people mistakes. Ideas and political views mean little if a president is unable to find people qualified to run the government. A potentially good presidency has been scuttled by unnecessary scandals, cronyism and a refusal to listen to outside criticism.
Bush's presidency has offered a number of lessons that voters should keep in mind over the coming months when they select our next president. One particularly stands out. Administrative incompetence can cripple a presidency just as much asideological failings, There will be a lot of candidates making the right promises during the next election, but good words mean nothing if a president can't choose good subordinates.
Stephen Parsley's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at sparsley@cavalierdaily.com.
Read More
PATEL: Personal development courses support students beyond the gradebook
By Heer Patel | 4 days agoThe University must rethink its approach to education beyond traditional major-specific requirements and mandate personal development courses.
EDITORIAL: Commercialization threatens U.Va.’s educational mission
By Editorial Board | 5 days agoAfter all, measuring the University’s worth in terms of accrued capital, operational efficiency and numerical rankings molds this space into just another cookie-cutter institution.
YOUNIS: Why every U.Va. student should say yes to English
By Ayat Younis | January 9, 2025Every student at the University, regardless of their primary field of study, can professionally and academically benefit from engaging with the English department.
