Gonzo’s Gonzo — Now?

Time to pack it in, Alberto? You don’t say. Hey, I know it’s going to be lonely without Karl Rove but we all have to ask: Why now? The recent revelations about how many political briefings actually took place within the agencies wasn’t nearly as bad as the “linguistic parsing” you tried to pass off in those tortured testimonials you gave to Congress. What could possibly have made the job less appealing now?

It is most impressive that President Bush accepted the attorney general’s resignation Friday and nothing leaked until now, but what is the bottom line here? And most impressive — or perhaps pitiful — is that Gonzales chose not to budge from the pressure cooker all these months. I don’t know the exact date we all started our collective Gonzales vigil but a conservative guess is March, which means Washington has spent HALF A YEAR wondering how this guy goes to work each day. 

Like the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, the day after a GOP wipeout in the midterm elections last fall, one cannot help but wonder about how Gonzales’s exit is connected to the ongoing, round-the-clock briefings between the White House and the generals about Iraq. Not to mention that as of next week, after Labor Day, the race for president begins for real. Everybody ready for some confirmation hearings? I feel exhausted just remembering the week I spent covering John Ashcroft’s hearings, those many years ago when Bush was still popular.

Anyone think Bush had a hand in this? I hope he had, which would mean he is trying to be effective, or at least has a trick up his sleeve. If this resignation just “happened” to Bush after six months, we’re really in trouble.

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