Jewish World Review Jan. 31, 2005 / 21 Shevat 5765

Myriam Marquez

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Albatross for 2: Gonzales and sore losers


http://www.jewishworldreview.com | There are life lessons that only time and reflection can teach us. The would've, should've, could've lessons. The wrong calls and missed opportunities that along the way build character and help us better navigate tough currents ahead.

Those lessons are at the core of the knock-down political battles in the Senate over the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales to serve as U.S. attorney general and Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state.

Did Gonzales, serving as White House counsel, and Rice, as President Bush's national security adviser, make mistakes during the last four years? Did they learn from those mistakes? What's wrong with admitting you misspoke or made a wrong call?

Rice's "mushroom cloud" public statements about Iraq's nuclear potential and the likelihood that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction - both used as the main reasons to attack Iraq - have proved to be dead wrong.

So was Gonzales' legal counsel in helping formulate the Bush administration's war-on-terror policy of imprisoning "enemy combatants" indefinitely and incommunicado - a view rejected 8-to-1 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Not to mention his role in redefining torture in interrogation methods of detainees - seen by many legal minds and American military leaders as an outright usurpation of the Geneva Conventions that would place U.S. troops in danger.

Despite the harsh rhetoric from the left, a majority of Senate Democrats joined Republicans to confirm Rice as secretary of state Wednesday. It's telling that among the yes votes were California Sen. Diane Feinstein and Connecticut's Christopher Dodd. You can't get much more liberal than Dodd. (OK, maybe Ted Kennedy, who was among the 12 Democrats and one independent who voted against her.)

On the same day, though, the Senate Judiciary Committee split along party lines on Gonzales, with 10 Republicans voting for him and eight Democrats against. Democratic New York Sen. Charles Schumer, who voted for Rice, refuses to support Gonzales. "It's hard to be a straight shooter when you're a blind loyalist," he said about Gonzales' ties to Bush, which go back more than a decade to Texas. Being "less polarizing" than Attorney General John Ashcroft "is not enough to get my vote," Schumer added.

The war on terror has become Alberto Gonzales' albatross. Democrats are preparing an all-out attack on his nomination. Make no mistake - this is not solely based on some questionable legal calls. There's a political calculus being made here that may come back to haunt Democrats in four years.

Expect Democrats in "safe" seats representing states where Mexican-American voters aren't influential to paint Gonzales as a "blind loyalist" as Schumer has. Hey, he's from New Yawk where liberal Puerto Ricans reign - not New Mexico.

Yet Gonzales, a Harvard grad with a compelling life story as the son of migrant workers, isn't some clueless Clarence Thomas who couldn't even get a decent rating from the American Bar Association.

Gonzales, it can be argued, was simply doing what good lawyers do when rationalizing detaining enemy combatants who were independent of any country. Legally, they might not have the protection of the Geneva Conventions. I disagreed with that view from the get-go, but it would be unfair to make Gonzales the "architect" of a White House policy post 9-11 that was backed by millions. Gonzales was just one player in the grand scheme of things.

Lawyers do what their jobs call them to do. If you represent a president who wants a legal rationale for detaining prisoners, you find that rationale. If you represent an accused killer, you try to get him off, based on whatever evidence you can find to build a case that there's "reasonable doubt," even if your gut suspects your client did the crime.

How many other attorneys general have lost cases before the Supremes? Loads.

Let's face it: It's payback for an election lost. Rice got a reprieve, perhaps because there's less of a paper trail about her positions, compared to Gonzales, who served as a Texas Supreme Court justice.

It's telling, too, that the nation's oldest nonpartisan Latino civil-rights organization, LULAC, is backing Gonzales despite disagreeing with some of his past positions. The Civil Rights Coalition, made up predominantly of black civil-rights groups, labor unions and liberal women's groups, is urging a thumbs down. Not surprising, since it's an ultra-liberal group.

In the end, Gonzales will be confirmed because he has enough Republican votes. Democrats, who saw Hispanic voters' support drop during the last presidential campaign, will be the sore losers for making Gonzales the whipping boy of their anti-Bush tirade.



Myriam Marquez is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Comment by clicking here.

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