Find Something Else to Criticize

I don't agree with the Bush administration on much, but on this whole question of the firing of U.S. attorney generals, I am totally on their side. U.S. attorney generals serve at the pleasure of the president. The fact that he fired them for political reasons is totally within his purview as administrator-in-chief of the federal bureaucracy. He hired them, and he can fire them. If you want to take that power away from him, and move the attorney generals into the civil service, then do that. But in the meantime, don't go after Bush for something that was totally legit. You can make a political fight out of it, and argue that the Bush administration is putting politics ahead of competence and judicial fairness (but frankly, politics trumps competence and judicial fairness all the time in Washington, and on both sides of the aisle), but to argue that it was improper for Bush to fire these guys is ridiculous. He has the statutory power to do so. Hell, Congress gave the president the power to do so, which makes their bitching about it now even more ridiculous. Also, the whole notion that Attorney Generals should be non-political offices is also absurd. At the state/local level, they are elected and partisan. Why? Because prosecution is a political process. These guys have the power to go after all sorts of people and all sorts of interests, and the decisions that narrow down the list of possible targets are rarely rational, fair or judicious. The law, far from what one might assume, is not a process of logical application of rules already set forth. It is an arena in which power, interest and influence collide. In other words, it is fundamentally political. Think of the O.J. Simpson trial. Do the words fair, judicious, or rational come to mind? No. Money, corruption, power and race are more apt descriptions. If that bothers you, and it should, then work to change the system. But don't blame Bush for playing by the rules of the present system, even if it is broken and unfair. The holier than though attitude of the Democrats leading the charge against Bush and Gonzalez is sickening in the assumptions that it makes about the purity of the Democratic party. This whole debate is itself a perversion of our system. Waste not our time on scoring political points that matter only for reelection and not for the greater calling of service to the nation. We deserve justice and fairness but such elusive goals will not be brought about by the pretentious pontificating of politicians, but only by the conscientious determination of statesmen to get the job done. Where are our leaders? Look for action over words in finding them.