The Attorney General and the Unitary Executive

Slate magazine has a habit of turning conventional wisdom on its head by presenting intriguing arguments why a consensus appraisals of events are wrong.

Here Dahlia Lithwick claims that Alberto Gonzalez--who most argued did horribly in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee--actually performed admirably, given the job he was sent to do.

She argues that he was not there to defend his actions in the firing of the attorneys, but to prop up the unitary executive theory by--between the lines--claiming that Congress has few powers to compel the executive branch to do anything, much less oversee how it handles personnel issues like who gets to hold on to a job in the Justice Department.

Here's a quote:

Gonzales' failure to even mount a defense; his posture of
barely tolerating congressional inquiries; his refusal to
concede that he owed the Senate any explanation or
any evidence; his refusal to even accept that he bore
some burden of proof—all of it tots up to a masterful
display of the perfect contempt felt by the Bush
executive branch for this Congress and its pretensions
of oversight. In the plainest sense, Gonzales elevated
the Bush legal doctrine of "Because I said so" into a
public spectacle.

President Bush's support of his testimony later in the day were therefore not the result of delusion, but cunning. Critics of the attorney general don't understand that they are playing different games under different sets of rules. . Perhaps the Senate should enlarge its focus beyond this simple personnel matter and look at the larger issue of expansive presidential power.