Interesting Rumors About Replacing Gonzales
from NBC's Kelly O'Donnell: Chertoff may no longer be in the running. Lots of names are in the mix now, with and "Paul Clement, George Terwilliger and Larry Silberman are among those being considered." I have no idea if these rumors are true or total baloney, but I would prefer Clement among that group. But I still think Chertoff would be better than any of those three. I think they should also talk to David Levi, currently the Dean of Duke Law School and a former District Judge (and the son of former AG Edward Levi). Thanks to Simon Dodd for the link.
Days after the storm, Chertoff still had no idea that there were people stranded at the NoLa Convention Center. In fact, when a reporter told him as much, he denied that there were people there. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4828771
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10511927/site/newsweek/
Lets not replace someone asleep at the wheel of the DOJ with someone who tends to fall asleep at the wheel. Anyone who was ever associated with Katrina should be prohibited from moving up in government service.
With that said, I wonder if he is only being "considered" to keep him happy. According to Supreme Conflict he also was "considered" for a SCOTUS slot but only because he said he wanted to be considered and was never actually in the serious running.
opposed to illegal immigration, not immigration as
a whole. If wanting to limit immigration to
the current 1 million permanent residents admitted per year
is considered "anti-immigrant", then there is
nothing to discuss.
The AG must believe that
1. The United States is a nation with borders and
a single rule of law.
2. It is wrong to hold enforcement of the law (e.g. immigration law) hostage to political demands such
as amnesty.
3. It is wrong to compare wanting to reduce illegal
immigration to desiring capital punishment for said people.
Chertoff is shamefully wrong on items 1-3 above and
is unfit for any appointed government position.
So are you implying that a) you disagree that Chertoff dropped the ball on Katrina or that b) even if he did, it's appropriate to reward those mistakes by making him the U.S. attorney general?
The latest leaks from the administration claim that they aren't worrying about "confirmability," which suggests to me that they are, in fact, looking for someone who would sail through the process fairly easily. Clement would most likely be a slam dunk, if he wants the promotion, but he's in a pretty good spot in his current job.
(1) I find it hard to figure out exactly how much blame Chertoff deserves. The entire episode was a massive clusterf*ck, and I'm not sure if Chertoff was to blame or people gave him really bad information. Many people have studied this more closely than I, of course; I don't pretend to have looked at it closely.
(2)I tend to look at staffing for a position of Attorney General by focusing mostly on the interests of the American people. I want someone who will do an outstanding job. Given that, I tend to look less at whether a staffing decisions is a 'reward' or 'punishment' based on the moral blameworthiness of the individual (which I think is hard to measure). I understand if you disagree, of course.
To be fair to Chertoff, being incompetent at something you're not qualified for, is not a bar to being competent at what you *are* qualified for.
DHS probably required a quasi-miraculous sort of person to pull it together, one deeply versed in bureaucracy while not spiritually enthralled thereto. Chertoff can't be blamed for that, especially given that his background gave him no expertise in the subject.
*My* (perhaps blinkered) theory as to why Chertoff won't fly, is that he's implicated in various of the torture memos, and one might hope the Dems would not confirm him without receiving details on just what the putative Top Cop signed onto.
Oh, my! ;^)
Of those listed, I think Silberman the best pick because he has the fewest ties to this administration. Chertoff would be a disaster. His handling of Katrina was a disgrace, and even if one disagreed, the political ramifications would be very bad. In response to Orin, I would note that because of those political ramifications and the fact that his confirmation would turn into a bloody battle, he would not be the best choice to serve the American people.
I wasn't actually using "reward" in the moral sense (though, as you point out, I think one could make an argument that anyone in a position of responsibility regarding the disaster that was the federal government's response to Katrina could be the subject of moral outrage that would effect whether they deserve the public trust).
I really was thinking more about, as rarango put it above, his organizational competence. In most cases, it is illogical to give incompetent employees a promotion - which I would imagine most lawyers at least would consider a shift from DHS to AG to be. Why should it be any different here?
As far as legal credentials go, I think Anderson's allusion to the torture memos is important too.
That is certainly a fair statement, and maybe Chertoff would be a good attorney general, in the mold of Ashcroft, someone who I obviously disagree with but nevertheless did his job competently and well (see this analysis from Matt Yglesias, which came before Gonzalez became AG). The problem, though, is that if he was not competent to be Secretary of HS, he should not have taken the job.
It's worth noting that Clement is going to serve as Acting Attorney General, possibly for quite a while. So he doesn't really have the option to dodge the bullet altogether, I guess.
Either way, he is to blame, because he was the boss of the people who were giving him the bad information. Sure, some of them (like Brownie) may have been forced upon him, but not all of them. As I work for a state entity in Louisiana, I can assure you that the FEMA bureaucracy remains a clusterf*ck. I don't recall reading of any high-level firings later, of people who gave Chertoff bad information. Remember, there were in fact a few FEMA employees on the ground (almost in the water) in New Orleans in the immediate aftermath who were trying to relay accurate information to the powers-that-be while Michael Brown was worrying about what shirt to wear for dinner.
Seriously, the bottom line is that an agency he was in charge of did a dreadful, dreadful, dreadful job. I'm disinclined to support him for any important position until evidence comes out to show that he really wasn't at fault, and in fact did everything he could to improve things.
I was an AUSA as part of the Chertoff regime in the DNJ. Day-to-day management was handled, as in most offices, by the First Assistant Paul Fishman (a remarkably talented attorney in his own right every bit the equal of Chertoff intellectually and far superior as a manager).
Mike was reknowned for his aloofness and downright rudeness, typically sailing past you down the hall too deep in thought to even nod hello. There was a story going around the office that standing next to Chertoff in the men's room was like standing there alone (no shoe tapping jokes, please).
I didn't believe the rep until I found myself in Eric Muller's office. Eric handled appeals. So while sitting there discussing the case that Eric would be writing the response brief for, Chertoff -- on several occasions -- would come in and without even the barest acknowledgment, interrupt either Eric or me mid-sentence (Eric's office was so small, you couldn't help but see and hear two people talking when you walked in) and just start talking.
The American Lawyer did a profile on Chertoff in the early '90s. He was quite the mob-buster while an AUSA in the SDNY. His refusal to acknowledge other AUSAs (that is, those who offered no way to advance his career) was called "zany" by someone who spent many months with him successfully trying the "Commission Case".
All that aside, my reservations about Chertoff have nothing to do with his apparent inability to acknowledge anyone lower than, say, an Ass't AG.
My reservations concern his role in crafting the PATRIOT Act and advocating, possibly, domestic spying on American citizens. A civil libertarian he's not.
Assuming you're right, shouldn't you be wanting Chertoff to *leave* the incredibly important job that you think he is screwing up so royally? The job of AG is no more important than the job of Secretary of DHS; if anything, I think the Secretary's job is more important. I think a lawyer's lawyer and DOJ guy like Chertoff is more suited to head DOJ than a place like DHS.
Keyes,
I also heard great things about Paul Fishman. When I was clerking for Judge Garth, I basically wanted to be the next Paul Fishman (I applied to DNJ and had some interviews, but then I got an offer from Main Justice with a short fuse and had to decide; I went with the bird in hand given the uncertainties of getting the DNJ job at the time.) As for Eric Muller, the man is a terror, but don't tell him I said that.
CrazTrain:
Re your response to me, very fair point. That may be right.
Well, yeah. I'm sure PatHMV *does* want Cherthoff to step down as head of DHS. As do I. But as long as we're "wanting" things that are not going to happen, why can't we also want both Cherthoff to resign AND an alternative candidate named AG?
That DQ's him from the job in my book.
Lack of any plan by C for DHS progress from "dodo bird" status indicates C has no (publicly noticeable) flair for running a large bureaucracy, which is what the DOJ is (with say 110,000 in its headcount).
I'll give him half a pass -- I can excuse his not saying that before Katrina, b/c who knew?
he said something to the effect of "Well I must have been in a side discussion when that came up."
Well, Ugh, as we now know from Keyes, he was probably ignoring whatever the peons were talking about? The I'm-an-arrogant-brat defense. I like it!
Realisitcally, who would be a loyal enough Bushie to be nominated while also being confirmable in the Senate? I don't know the players well enough to judge for myself, but I haven't seen any commentaries that explain who might meet both requirements.
Perhaps Acting AG Clement should get used to his acting job.
He seems perfectly qualified -- hasn't tried a case or argued an appeal in decades, if ever, which seems to be a requirement for AG.
There is a lot of chatter among bloggers and surrogates representing "the base," advocating an aggressive nomination that would couple the AG confirmation with the legislative campaign to cripple, repeal or "reform" FISA permanently, positioning Democrats as obstructing the "war on terror." Such proponents are feeling their oats from the surprising victory on the Protect America Act.
Silberman, who took senior status on the D.C. Circuit several years ago, is a favorite candidate of this camp, and his nomination would be viewed as hostile by Judiciary Committee Democrats. It would flaut the conventional assumption that a weakened Bush must appear more bipartisan with his choice for the new attorney general, or emulate Gerald Ford's selection of Edward H. Levi as an independent eminence.
Bush is more like Nixon than Ford, and his signature style is to take the offensive when he seems cornered. Additionally, I think Bush and Cheney view the re-expansion of executive authority, especially associated with war powers, to be central to the legacy they want for themselves. I don't think pleasing the legal establishment and academy by "restoring confidence" in the Department of Justice is part of the legacy they care about.
So understated, one has to use a seismograph.
Hee hee! This, to me, was the classically understated part.
Does Chertoff have a clue or anything that suggests he is competent to manage DoJ and set policy there?
Possibly, but from what I've heard the people at that meeting weren't exactly peons.
Come to think of it, Ann Coulter's an attorney, isn't she?...
Oh, my! ;^)
Not a bad suggestion.
She couldn't be confirmed, and I wouldn't want her to be, but after the Judiciary Committee went 10 rounds with her it would be a lot easier to get anyone else past them.
Besides, what better CSPAN entertainment could there possibly be than Ann Coulter v. Teddy Kennedy?
Prior to Katrina, Louisiana was a competitive state (with a Democratic governor and one Democratic U.S. Senator). With tens of thousands of blacks relocated from New Orleans to Texas, Louisiana is much more likely to elect Republicans.
For the administration to appoint a member of a racial minority to succeed the first Hispanic attorney general may have some political appeal. How about the dark-skinned, partisan Republican toady, without whom His Accidency would not have been anointed, and the invocation of whose name causes those on Eric Rudolph's side of the culture war to genuflect and drives liberals bonkers: Clarence Uncle Thomas.
To Chertoff?