Kansas City, Mo. – For months, in the face of brutal criticism, President Bush stood by Alberto Gonzales.
Now, as the attorney general joins the migration of the president’s closest Texas friends out the door, the question is: Where will Bush turn for help in the waning months of his administration now that the Austin crowd is packing its bags and heading home? And what price did Bush – and his party – pay for that loyalty?
Even Bush’s supporters are used to the pattern. Bush stuck with political adviser Karl Rove, despite the 2006 election debacle and potential connections with the U.S. attorney quagmire. He nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, when even Republicans questioned her conservative credentials. And this year, Gonzales.
“It’s a big code of personal principle for him not to throw people over the side,” said Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas in Austin. “The president has an issue with defiance of people who press him to do things when he’s supposed to be the decider.”
That defiance has earned Bush the strong support of his friends but may have cost him support in his party and for his presidency.
In 2006 Bush supported Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, even as the situation in Iraq deteriorated, hurting the party’s chances at the polls. Later, Republicans were outraged to learn that Rumsfeld had wanted to quit before Election Day but that Bush had refused to accept his resignation until after the voting.
The decision may have cost the GOP the Senate, which in turn led to a series of investigations – including the circumstances surrounding the firing of nine U.S. attorneys – that contributed to Gonzales’ downfall.
Many of Bush’s former top aides are expected to continue as informal advisers to Bush, but he will have to adjust to new faces, new management styles and new approaches to government.
Republicans and Democrats said the departures could create a bigger opening for another longtime friend, Vice President Dick Cheney.
“It doesn’t diminish the vice president at all, even as he’s discredited in many ways,” said University of Kansas political scientist Burdett Loomis.
“He becomes the person who’s had the longest-term relationship.” Miller said, “He (Bush) has enormous confidence in Dick Cheney, and for good reason.”
But leaning on Cheney, whose poll numbers are lower than Bush’s, may be a problem for the White House as it struggles to find support for a variety of issues in the last year of its second term.
Some of the blame for that struggle, Republicans and Democrats said, can be laid at the feet of Gonzales and his long fight to keep his job, a battle that included testimony before Congress that even Republicans found not credible.
“I don’t know why the president kept him as long as he did,” said former Democratic Rep. Martin Frost of Texas. “It was long overdue.”
Former U.S. Attorney Jean Paul Bradshaw of Kansas City said the resignation was the right thing.
“For the good of the department, it was time to move on,” Bradshaw said. “Fair or unfair, it’s what happens in politics sometimes.”
