By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – May 30, 2007
As I noted last week, almost two years ago, on July 1, 2004,
I published a column in this space on Alberto Gonzales entitled “Counsel to the
President.” Well, since that time the young man has risen even higher in
the Georgite hierarchy. He is getting lots of publicity these days.
As I noted, the publishing industry’s view of publicity is that there is no
such thing as “bad publicity,” only “publicity.” Since he is just
so much in the news, I thought that the Gonzales subject is one worth
revisiting at this time. Please note that this “Part 2” is being written
on May 21, 2007, for scheduled publication on May 30. As I noted last week
as well, I am convinced that Gonzales will still be in office on that day and
indeed for a considerable time thereafter, for reasons that I detail
below. If I am wrong about that, then all I can say is that everyone
makes mistakes.
Last week I dealt with actions that Gonzales took when he
was simply White House Counsel, that concerned the Constitution and how Bush
could go about violating it willy-nilly, as it were. I did not discuss
the “Comey-Ashcroft-on-intensive-care story,” (but I will below). I
presented Gonzales’ recommendations to Bush on violating the Constitution to
remind all of us that what he was doing back then was rather worse even than
firing US Attorneys for party political reasons. Indeed, Gonzales was and
still is a major cog in the Georgite wheel pushing forward the steamroller that
is attempting to flatten US Constitutional Democracy into the tarmac.
On the Ashcroft visit, in the Constitutional context
Gonzales’ trying to get a fellow reactionary (although apparently not a fascist)
to sign off on a secret program that everyone knew was illegal, when the man
was possibly at death’s door, has special significance. That significance
is about what the Gonzales/Card visit was about, not that they made it.
Gonzales was recommending to Bush that he violate a specific law on domestic
wiretapping and other electronic surveillance.
In so doing he was recommending to Bush not only that he,
Bush, should break the law, but also that he should not do his duty to “Protect
and Defend” the Constitution, and go ahead and break the law. That
Gonzales was the messenger himself in this case compounds the matter.
That hospital room scene, with Comey having rushed over sirens blaring, to try
to intercept Gonzales and Card, reads like it was a scene out of a Tom Clancy
movie, like Patriot Games. Harrison Ford would play Tom Clancy’s
all-American hero, Jack Ryan, standing for truth, justice and the American way
against some Gonzales/Card character or two.
The law that Bush would have been continuing to violate in
that case had of course been passed by the Congress under its powers and
responsibility, under that same Constitution. Let’s forget about the ethics and
morality of this Bush Administration (there are indications that Bush himself
ordered Gonzales and Card to Ashcroft’s bedside) which lectures all of the rest
of us on ethics and morality and runs election campaigns on the two. More
important is that what Gonzales did in this instance was just another example
of how he regards the Constitution and Constitutional Democracy. For him,
it is quite obvious that, like his boss, he thinks of the Constitution as
nothing but a “scrap of paper.”
There are several major issues here. Going back to
last week’s material again, one is that, if Bush, on Gonzales’ advice,
authorized the breaking of the Geneva Conventions in regard of torture policy
(discussed last week), since they are part of the Constitution, that is an
impeachable offense. The other, even more important in my view, is that
what is going on here is the substitution of the Rule of Man for the Rule of
Law. This is a very serious threat to every US citizen, and other persons
for that matter residing in the United States, as well as to US captives
abroad. We now have as the highest legal officer in the land one who
thinks that the Constitution is meaningless, and indeed so is the concept of
the Rule of Law. So when Bush, and Cheney, want to go with the
un-Constitutional hypothesis of a “Unitary Executive,” when they want to break
the law because it suits them and their policies and political purposes to do
so, they have the nation’s top lawyer saying, “yeah, go to it, man.” This
is truly scary. And this is the most significant fact about what is going
on now with the US Attorneys firings and etc.
Under this doctrine, for example, as we have discussed
numerous times in this space, the President, on his own authority, can label
you or re-label you as some category of person who exists outside of the
protections of the US Constitution. Is it presently in the law, as passed
by Congress? Oh yes, it is. But those laws were passed at the
behest of this President, by his lock-step pre-2007 Congressional
majorities. Whether or not the protections of individual rights and
liberties being violated here are to be found in the body of the Constitution,
or in treaties that became part of it, Bush/Gonzales say that they can do
whatever the President determines to do under something called “inherent
powers.”
Such powers just happen to be nowhere found in the
Constitution under any “plain reading” of the text which reactionaries like to
trumpet about, except on those occasions when it is inconvenient for
them. And so in this case, this application of so-called “inherent
authority” happens to be unconstitutional under the Fourth (search and
seizure), Fifth (due process), Sixth (jury trial in criminal cases), and 14th (equal protection of the law) amendments. But Bush and his top legal
officer go about their business as they fit, Constitution or no. Under it
the President has leave to define those powers in any manner he sees fit.
To come up with such a concept is to endorse explicitly the substitution of the
Rule of Man for the Rule of Law. In so doing, the process also explicitly
endorses the eventual end to American Constitutional Democracy, which rests on
the bedrock of the Rule of Law, as we have known it.
This, in my view, is the most important single issue facing
the country in the “Gonzales Scandal.” The Georgites have rewritten the
Constitution on their own authority. “We’ll tell you what rights you have
and what rights you don’t have, and once we tell you that you don’t have any,
we can do whatever we want to with you, whether it’s torture by another name or
indefinite imprisonment without charges and without recourse.” It happens
that an Executive undertaking to act in just this manner was a major factor in
a Revolution that began around 1776. But that is neither here not
there. Going after the Constitution is the issue. Having an
Attorney General who encourages, who facilitates the President is doing this is
the issue. And the plan to make the Justice Department into a “Justice”
Department, whose primary task becomes not upholding Federal statute but doing
everything it can under the ruse of enforcing the law to further the political
and policy aims of the Georgites and the Republican Party is the issue.
Now we come to the question, how long will Gonzales remain
in office? In my view, he will remain there for as long as Bush can hold
out against the political pressure coming even form his own party, and Bush has
proven, on the Iraq war for example, that he is pretty good at doing
that. Gonzales is precisely the Attorney General that Bush wants in that
office, and he would have trouble finding another like him who could get
confirmed by a Democratic Congress. It’s Bush, not Gonzales, who is the
primary perp. here. From now until the end of his term, Bush will run “Justice”
the way he wants to. Gonzales is doing exactly what he was hired to do in
carrying out the BushCheneyRove political, economic, and social agenda, so why
change?
It happens that there are other possible reasons why
Gonzales might say on. The main one is that he knows more of the
skeletons in the Bush closet and more about their details than anyone.
You think Tenet’s book was bad for the Georgites? You can just imagine
what a Gonzales book would reveal. The old saying “there is no honor
among thieves” certainly applies to this one. And if Tenet got $4,000,000
for his book, you can imagine how much Gonzales would get for his.
If I am wrong, and Bush would sacrifice Gonzales, he might
well wait until the end of the year and then make a recess appointment. I
hear that John Bolton is still looking for a permanent job. That could happen
if at the time the Republicans are getting really desperate about their
electoral chances. Some of those desperate Republicans might somehow be
able to bring significant pressure to bear on Bush to give them something of a
break, assuming the CheneyBush Permanent War in the Middle East is still
underway. That would assume that Rove has little
electoral-power-backed-by-really-nasty-personal-stuff left on those Republicans
who are tempted to speak out. It would also assume that CheneyBush will
have been able to find a suitable a very-well-lined-with-dough sinecure for the
poor Consigliore, and extract from him a somehow enforceable promise that he
would not do that book (Rove may very well have stuff on him).
Stay tuned.