Alberto Gonzales: "whacked like a piñata"

Syndicated columnist and member of the San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board Ruben Navarrette Jr. has been fluffing up Alberto Gonzales a lot recently (March 7, March 21), so it should come as no suprise that he's continuing to shovel muck today in a special CNN commentary. What's shocking is the entirely new level to which he takes the insanity.

To be up front, there's a halfway legitimate point in all of Navarrette's mess, which is that accepting Gonzales as a scapegoat when it's the White House and Karl Rove behind this whole mess, is not a victory. I'm all for Rove paying for what he did as well. But he frames his whole argument in disgusting racist terms and tries to marginalize anyone who would have a gripe against "an honorable public servant ... [and] ... a straight shooter" by assuming that there's no way that criticism could be fair or justified.

He's good enough to give us a rundown of the people who object to Gonzales' performance as Attorney General and makes it pretty clear that the list at this point includes virtually everyone except President Bush. But apparently that's just because everyone is wrong, and most of them just hate a successful Hispanic.

Leading this lynch mob are white liberals who resent Gonzales because they can't claim the credit for his life's accomplishments and because they can't get him to curtsy. Why should he? Gonzales doesn't owe them a damn thing.

Yes, that's right. It's all those racist white liberals who insist on keeping minorities down and can't stand it when one of them gets power, It's because he doesn't genuflect at the altar of white people that he's hated. It can't possibly have anything to do with his actual job performance. Or his systematic evisceration of the Constitution of the United States. Which is, ultimately, where the racial argument breaks down horribly. Navarrette would have us believe that Gonzales can't possibly be getting criticism that's not infused with racist bitterness. But the flipside of this argument is that, because of his race, he gets a free pass. Well I'm sorry, but that isn't how it works. You do the job and you answer for your performance.

He also argues that Democrats just pose "with mariachis as they nibble chips and salsa on Cinco De Mayo" while the real uplifting of the Hispanic community, entirely and solely in the form of Alberto Gonzales, has been done by George W. Bush. While absurdly simplistic and not particularly based in any reality that I'm familiar with, it doesn't have anything to do with the firings of U.S. Attorneys.

It's telling that a Gonzales apologist wants to talk about anything except the issue at hand. Navarrette dispenses quickly and easily with the actual substance of the US Attorney issue by laying it all on Karl Rove, then whips up an emotional frenzy over non-issues, because he knows discussing the real complaints would be a losing proposition. Gonzales is responsible for the Justice Department, and has a long history of doing a poor job in that position. Perhaps Navarette has a point if his argument is that this incident, if isolated, would not be grounds for Gonzales' departure. But that dodges the crux of the problem. Alberto Gonzales became Attorney General in August of 2005, and in that time, the Justice Department has delivered less and less justice by the day. That is a failure of the job, and if this incident is the straw that breaks the camel's back, so be it.

The commentary closes with an ominous, if absurdly condescending in every direction, prediction for Democrats in 2008:

Well, if they succeed in running him off without a fair hearing, many Hispanics won't forget the shoddy treatment afforded this grandson of Mexican immigrants. You watch. Democrats will have to intensify their efforts to win Hispanic votes in the 2008 elections. And there's not that much chips and salsa on the planet.

It sounds to me as though the lesson being pitched here is that the color of Gonzales' skin is more important than the substance of his job performance whether you approve or disapprove of the job performance. Hispanics will quit the Democratic party en masse, Navarrette imagines, because Democrats aren't defending the country, they're attacking skin color.

If Gonzales wants a fair hearing, guess what? He can have one. In a revelatory change of course since January of this year (coincidence?), Congress will actually conduct legitimate investigations. All Gonzales has to do is show up and solemnly swear. Except, of course, that George Bush, the hero of racial equality in this story remember, doesn't want the truth to come out. Doesn't sound particularly helpful to the Gonzales cause to me. But then again, I see Gonzales as a man, not a color. Ruben Navarrette Jr. may want to try it sometime.