• U.S. Attorney General: “Mi abogado” U.S. Attorney General: “Mi abogado” From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – November 12, 2004 In a perfect world, the president would find a brilliant, savvy, independent lawyer to serve as attorney general. President Gerald
• U.S. Attorney General: “Mi abogado”
U.S. Attorney General: “Mi abogado”
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – November 12, 2004
In a perfect world, the president would find a brilliant, savvy, independent lawyer to serve as attorney general. President Gerald R. Ford’s attorney general, Edward Levi, who restored the Justice Department’s credibility after Watergate, was an ideal example.
But recent history shows that this kind of attorney general is the exception, not the rule. It has become a bipartisan tradition for presidents to appoint best friends, campaign managers, even brothers as attorneys general. President George W. Bush’s decision to pick White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales fits within this uninspired, if comfortable, tradition. Mr. Bush refers to Mr. Gonzales as “mi abogado,” Spanish for “my lawyer”.
A close personal relationship between the president and the attorney general makes sense in some ways. The attorney general gives the president legal advice and represents his position in court. But if the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals demonstrated anything it was the importance of independence.
President Richard M. Nixon’s former campaign manager and attorney general, John N. Mitchell, served 19 months in prison for the Watergate cover-up. President Ronald Reagan’s good friend and attorney general Edwin Meese III made questionable prosecutorial decisions protecting the president in the early days of the Iran-Contra investigation.
The challenge for Mr. Gonzales will be to recognize that his ultimate obligation is not to his friend – who is also his boss and his president – but to the Constitution.
Mr. Gonzales, the second of eight children of migrant farm workers, has an inspiring life story and strong legal qualifications. Democrats, who ceded a chunk of the Hispanic vote this year, would be crazy to block the nomination of the first Hispanic attorney general.
But Mr. Gonzales comes with some baggage. As White House counsel, he initiated the flawed effort to set up military tribunals to try prisoners from Afghanistan. In a January 2002 memo, he argued that the United States was not obligated to give captives the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
Calling the war against terrorism “a new kind of war” he said, “this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”
Mr. Gonzales said his approach would have the benefit of making it harder to prosecute U.S. soldiers under a U.S. anti-torture law. That suggests that he may have known that U.S. troops were using questionable interrogation techniques.
When Secretary of State Colin Powell saw the Gonzales memo, he reportedly hit the roof, arguing, accurately, that it would “reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice.” Mr. Gonzales also argued that the president had the inherent power as commander in chief to designate “enemy combatants” without judicial second-guessing. The U.S. Supreme Court resoundingly disagreed.
Some religious conservatives also have objections to Mr. Gonzales, who ruled as a Texas Supreme Court judge that some teens should not be required to get parental permission for abortions. “While the ramifications of such a law may be personally troubling to me as a parent,” he wrote at the time, “it is my obligation as a judge to impartially apply the laws of the state without imposing my moral view. . . .”
If Mr. Gonzales can demonstrate that kind of independence and commitment to law, he may avoid the pitfalls awaiting an attorney general who is the president’s buddy.
