The Forgetful Administration

What has become clear from the hearings with Attorney-General Gonzales is that the man is an amnesiac. During the hearing, someone in the audience was keeping score on a little sign for the number of times Gonzales said, "I don't recall". Overall, it added up to 70+ times (according to NBC Nightly News).

And of course, the particularly strange thing about his lack of memory is that his amnesia has not been for small, trivial things such as the exact words someone used during a conversation. Rather, he initially claimed he wasn't involved in the firings. Now that his subordinates have even contradicted that, as well as emails, he admits he was involved. Nonetheless, at his hearing, he still couldn't remember much about what he had done in the past few months. And it's not as if firing 8 U.S. Attorneys were some minor trivial action. It was quite important and, in fact, 7 of those firings had been stewing for a year. The eighth (Julio Iglesias of New Mexico) was added after Iglesias refused to bring indictments against Democrats in New Mexico despite Sen. Pete Domenici's and Rep. Heather Wilson's phone calls to him. (Domenici then called the DOJ and, two weeks later, Iglesias's name was added to the list).

Amnesia appears to be a serious problem for this administration. Gonzales is certainly not the first to have trouble remembering important facts. Perhaps they should check the water in D.C. Of course, it's also possible that Gonzales is lying, but we know that a good guy like George Bush would never put up with the nation's top cop lying in such serious ways. And, as Bush is, in fact, putting up with Gonzales, we must reasonably conclude that Gonzales is an amnesiac.

Therefore, we have to ask: Would you want your Attorney-General to be an amnesiac? It seems to me that, if I were president, I'd like the nation's top cop to have some memories. I think that such things as memories are tremendously useful when doing one's job. So, thus, if Bush actually believed in the DOJ doing a good job, he would fire Gonzales right now simply for having no memory. But what's the chance that Bush would fire an incompetent guy? It only took 6 years to realize that Rumsfeld wasn't any good. Gonzales has only been Attorney-General for a little over 2 years.