Eager to get some straight answers about a confusing issue, I called my favorite inside source, Ananias Ziegler, the retired lieutenant colonel who now serves as media relations director for the Committee That Really Runs America.
“Are you calling to congratulate me for how we out-hustled the Defeatocrats on the Iraq War funding legislation?” Ziegler asked after the customary pleasantries.
“No,” I confessed. “It was something else.”
Before I could explain, he interrupted. “Then it must be the immigration bill that has just been made public. Finally, there’s a legal path to citizenship, as well as improved border security, and it’s a bipartisan solution to a major national problem.”
“And you managed to say all that without using the A-word that sets off certain Republicans,” I responded. “But even if that’s the first half-sensible thing that President Bush has supported in quite a while, that’s not why I called, either.”
“Then what is it?” an impatient Ziegler demanded.
“I called to find out when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will walk the plank.” Finally, I got it out.
Ziegler laughed. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Besides that, maybe one of you media jackals can tell me why it’s being labeled as a scandal.”
That seemed like a silly question, and I told him so.
“But where’s the scandal?” Ziegler asked. “The U.S. attorneys, in charge of prosecutions in their various federal judicial districts, serve at the pleasure of the president, do they not?”
“Indeed they do,” I agreed. “Many years ago, the U.S. attorney for the District of Colorado told me himself that he held a patronage job at the sufferance of President Ronald Reagan.”
Ziegler grunted agreement. “So if the president can fire any U.S. attorney at any time for any reason, and he fires a few, how is that possibly a scandal? There is nothing illegal about that, and so there’s no reason for all this brouhaha.”
“Wait a minute,” I protested. “It’s becoming more apparent every day that many of the firings – maybe even most of them – came about because the attorneys in question refused to prosecute potential voting fraud with as much vigor as the administration desired.”
“And so what?” Ziegler snorted. “There are thousands of laws. No administration has the resources to prosecute every violation of every law. You have to set priorities. Different political parties have different priorities. Democrats might put a higher priority on consumer fraud and environmental violations, whereas many Republicans believe that safeguarding the sanctity of our electoral process deserves the most attention. Having elections is one way we set those priorities, isn’t it?”
When he put it that way, it was hard for me to respond, but I did anyway. “But wasn’t the plan to use voter-fraud prosecutions to discourage registration and turnout, which would presumably hurt Democrats in swing states, and thus maintain Republican control?”
Ziegler paused before mustering a hollow laugh. “What are you smoking, Quillen? Are you going to tell me now that the Gulf of Tonkin incident 43 years ago was hyped by the government? That Enron was a Ponzi scheme? Why don’t you get real here?”
“But you know that the politicization of the Justice Department is a growing scandal,” I protested. “So why has Gonzales hung on so long?”
“Ah, Quillen, there’s so little you understand about Washington. Democrats don’t really want Gonzales to go. He’s such a convenient target. It’s a lot easier to point fingers at Gonzales than it is to come up with a military funding bill that supports the troops, arranges a way out of Iraq, and can get signed by the president. When you look at the bigger picture, Democrats are happy to see Gonzales stay.”
“But what about the administration?” I asked. “They can’t be pleased by all this.”
“Again, Quillen, you need to wise up. If Gonzales is getting all the attention, then nobody notices that there’s still a brutal civil war in Iraq. Nobody looks into why No Child Left Behind keeps leaving children behind. No questions about the Interior Department. You see, Gonzales is just a powerful magnet for attention that might otherwise go toward more embarrassing directions. So of course the president wants to keep him.”
“In other words, he performs a valuable service by staying in office,” I concluded for Ziegler.
“You got it.” He excused himself, for he had to ghost-write a speech which explained why $4-a-gallon gasoline was a welcome first step in curing America’s “addiction to oil.”
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
