I just saw Tony Snow on CNN (sometimes I watch just to see how Democrats are spinning things and Soledad O'Brien is a good barometer of that) talking about the U.S. Attorneys flap. He was hammering the point that the White House will make available the relevant people and documents but not under oath so as to protect executive privilledge. It was crystal clear how miserably the White House has failed on this issue. Once you act as if you did something wrong and that an investigation is justified, then you're stuck arguing about these arcane issues; but the bottom line is that the public believes that you did something wrong.
Here's how the White House should have handled this thing from the start:
We are replacing 8 U.S. AttorneysThat would have ended it, or at least made it a debate about whether it was a legal move or not. Now, the average person thinks something nefarious happened when that is not the case at all. This is just a stupid, self-inflicted and totally artificial scandal that White House ineptitude has created for itself.They were not pursuing the executive branch's prosecutorial agenda, which is set by the President
These are all political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the President and it is solely his prerogative to hire and fire U.S. Attorneys
Unlike the Clinton adminisration, which fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys in one fell swoop, we believe that most are doing a fine job and we only will be replacing 8 of them
Thank you and good night.
I don't think it would have ended anything and it would have sounded just as "guilty" as the way things are. Here's how I see it would have happened:
his prosecutorial agenda? He was going after his enemies, no doubt! His agenda also includes ignoring his cronies like Haliburton!
Remember, the allegeations don't have to be true, but your solution just opens a different door. Perhaps if instead of the vague "not following his agenda" they could have said right out, "these attorneys weren't aggressive enough in the opinion of the president."
Aside from the unfounded "they must have been going after democrats then" as I suggest above, it's very hard to argue with someone saying, "you need to be tougher on crime so we're replacing you".
Posted by: Christopher Estep ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.gopbloggers.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 22, 2007 11:03 AM
