JUSTICE AND TRUST

Before congressional Democrats make the mistake of overplaying the events around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys by the Bush administration, they would serve the public if they described what constitutional crisis they think has occurred. A fair reading of the situation would show less a need for subpoenas and testimony under oath and more of the same destructive politics in overdrive from the administration that has characterized and harmed it for years.

No one doubts that the White House has the right to replace the U.S. attorneys at any time – they serve at the president’s pleasure. (Nor does it matter whether Bill Clinton replaced the U.S. attorneys when he came into office, nor whether George Bush did the same in 2001.) The question is whether the current administration tried to turn these attorneys into political operatives, pressured them to ignore potential crimes by Republicans while prosecuting Democrats, retaliated against them when they refused and then falsely claimed the firings were related to performance.

This last question has especially hurt Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who announced he would never fire the attorneys for political reasons when a subsequent string of e-mails from within the administration shows this was not the case. Politically, the Justice Department had several calm and unremarkable ways of addressing its unhappiness with these attorneys, or it could have simply accepted that these firings weren’t worth the risk of the negative attention they would attract. Instead, it chose a clumsy and, at times, nasty way forward.

These events are more than just politics as usual and less than the disaster that Democrats claim. Certainly, they are less important than the harder-to-describe activity of the FBI’s extensive use of national security letters to sweep up the private records of tens of thousands of Americans every year. But the U.S. attorney story is hot for two reasons: the e-mail trail that refutes the comments by the administration, and the fact that several congressional Republicans wouldn’t mind seeing the attorney general dismissed.

Some conservatives do not like Mr. Gonzales’ tempered outlook on immigration while others reject his encroachment on personal privacy. They told him where he stands with them this week when they voted overwhelmingly to rescind a Patriot Act provision that allowed the president to appoint U.S attorneys without the customary Senate consent.

The president must decide whether Mr. Gonzales’ reputation on Capitol Hill is so badly damaged that he no longer can be effective. Based on the Senate vote this week, the answer is apparent.