The resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was long overdue. By staying in office, he was hurting his friend, the president – and this president has more hurts than any president should ever have.
Gonzales’ resignation was met with joy among Democrats and by relief among Republicans, particularly those up for re-election in ’08 who saw the attorney general as one more political liability they neither needed nor wanted. A sentiment shared, one assumes, by GOP presidential contenders.
When the resignation was announced at an Iowa Democratic Party gathering, loud applause broke out, led by none other than Sen. Hillary Clinton. That seemed typical among Democrats. Regrets among Republicans were borderline gleeful.
But this isn’t really about Alberto Gonzales the attorney general of the United States. True, he struck me as an incompetent AG, perhaps as incompetent as any – although Warren G. Harding’s AG, Harry Daugherty, gave the office a truly bad name – but rather about Gonzales the man and his friendship with George W. Bush.
Having studied him in the mainstream media, Gonzales impressed me, independent of his performance in office, as a decent fellow. The kind of guy you would want as your next-door neighbor, or sit with at Rotary meetings and discuss whether Barry Bonds really deserves to be baseball’s all-time home run king.
In post-resignation articles, much was made of Gonzales’ friendship with the president, one that began with Bush’s rise in Texas politics, of their closeness to each other – not unlike that of the Bush/Rove friendship, although no one ever thought of Gonzales in quite the same way as Rove, because most people, friend and foe, concede Rove’s brilliance, while seldom have the words “brilliance” and “Gonzales” been used in the same sentence.
Many agreed that Gonzales is a classic example of what happens when a president chooses friends for important positions within his government. The writers, almost without exception, said hiring “cronies” to help you run your government is something you shouldn’t do.
Well, such reasoning has always struck me as denying reality. It has also strikes me as illogical, devoid of a basic understanding of human nature and the meaning of friendship.
If you run for president, Congress, governor, mayor, city council or dogcatcher, and you win, you have the right to appoint your friends and supporters to office. Does anyone in their right mind think you should appoint your enemies?
Is there anyone who does that? Not solely as it regards politics but in any category of life? If you’re a businessperson, educator, or orthodontist, do you make a habit of rewarding those who were never clients, students or patients, who never assisted you in any life endeavor?
Puleeeez.
And yet when it comes to politics, otherwise intelligent people say that appointing cronies is a bad idea. Most often, of course, journalists lead that chorus. Writing about cronyism is a favorite subject, primarily because it relives them of heavy lifting. Oh, you know, “That person was appointed because he or she is a friend of the mayor’s, etc.” Duh.
Of course, one expects elected officials to appoint the most worthy and qualified of their friends and, in most cases, that happens. Along the way, mistakes may be made, an appointee isn’t up to the job or is caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but such moments do not mean rewarding your friends and supporters is wrong. It isn’t.
The appointing powers of a president are very great (as they should be), and no president can possibly know every person they appoint. Sometimes appointees fail in their jobs, which is always disappointing – especially when that appointee is a close friend, as with Alberto Gonzales.
When that happens, elected officials pay a price, as they should, as this president most surely will, but that fact does not negate the appropriateness of surrounding yourself with friends and supporters in office.
Elected officials have enough enemies; do not deny them their friends.
George Mitrovich is president of the
Denver Forum, a
non-profit,
non-partisan
forum
