Now seems like a fine time to revisit a blistering piece by former Solicitor General Theodore Olson in the September 2000 American Spectator. Sadly no copy is available online, formatting is mine.
The [DOJ] and its officials traditionally have been held to a standard of independence and non-partisanship not expected at other federal agencies. While the president has the prerogative to set broad law enforcement policies, and occasionally to participate directly in those DOJ decisions that influence the nation’s direction and priorities, the president must never interject his personal or partisan political impulses into individual DOJ decisions. And it is one of the most important responsibilities of the attorney general to insist that the line between national policy and personal advantage never be crossed. Whenever that barrier has been breached in the past, whenever politics has permeated the decision-making or the atmosphere at the Department of Justice, as occurred in Watergate, the consequences for the nation have been grave.
How grave, you might wonder. Really grave:
[…] Attorneys general are judged in substantial part by the quality and integrity of their subordinates, and by their insistence that they be selected on their merit and for their commitment to the rule of law.Janet Reno failed this test and succumbed to political pressures before the ink was dry on her appointment. Only days after she took office, she ordered the removal of all 93 of the nation’s United States attorneys. In order to maintain continuity in thousands of pending prosecutions, and as a statement to the public that elections do not influence routine law enforcement, the nation’s top prosecutors are traditionally replaced only after their successors have been located, appointed and confirmed by the Senate. On instructions from the White House, (she claimed it was a “joint” decision; no one believes that) Reno ordered all 93 to leave in ten days.
There could not have been a clearer signal that the Clinton campaign war room had taken over law enforcement in America. And few observers missed the point that Reno’s house cleaning served the important ancillary objective of removing the incumbent U.S. attorney in Little Rock, the location of so many Clinton family skeletons bursting to get out of their respective closets. Janet Reno filled that particular post with a former Bill Clinton student, someone who had worked in every one of his gubernatorial campaigns and the Clinton-Gore 1992 election effort.
That’s pretty grave. Oh wait, I got that wrong. The Clinton fired 93 prosecutors! indictment actually leaks like a sieve. Olson continues with the usual list of offenses, none of which the Bush DOJ has yet transformed into an indictment. Either Olson’s outrage has no basis in fact or somebdy other than liberals ought to feel pretty steamed at the DOJ’s incompetence.
Olson concludes:
[…] [T]hese events, and a long litany of others, combine to tell a story of a Department of Justice that was captured in early 1993 and has been directed by an intensely political and single-mindedly partisan White House. And an attorney general who has not only turned a blind eye to lawlessness in government, but who seems utterly unable to prevent the Department of Justice from being used to accomplish political ends. […] Unfortunately, this is only a part of Reno’s sad legacy. It will take a strong and principled attorney general and determined efforts to root out the contamination that has occurred and restore the Justice Department to the vital and proud position in government which it once occupied.
Without a doubt the quoted piece by Ted Olson speaks for the bulk of rightwing voices during the Clinton administration. Ann Coulter, constitutional scholar, appeared daily on FOX and CNN to lament Janet Reno’s slavish ties to Clinton. Lucianne Goldberg’s site, the Weekly Standard and every other outlet of Respectable Conservatism took it as established fact that political interference from the Clinton White House had reached unacceptable, Republic-threatening levels.
Having established that conservatism and the bedrock principles laid out in the Federalist Papers are really one and the same, I wonder how Ted Olson and allied conservatives would respond to developments like this.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides — who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys — extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal.
In the order, Gonzales delegated to his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, and his White House liaison “the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration” of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department, including all of the department’s political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation. Monica Goodling became White House liaison in April 2006, the month after Gonzales signed the order.
The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.
Gonzales literally signed an order handing responsibility for key DOJ decisions to the political arm of the White House. It seems hard to imagine a more flagrant violation of the American Spectator principle of DOJ independence.
For what it’s worth, the curious fact that Gonsales’s decision and its attendant documents never made it into the DOJ’s “thorough, comprehensive” document disclosures has caused Pat Leahy to politely question the DOJ’s good faith.
Ted Olson once wrote, the president must never interject his personal or partisan political impulses into individual DOJ decisions and conservatives everywhere nodded their heads. In the unimaginable circumstance that a Republican president would violate these priciples in the most flagrant way possible, that leaves loyal conservatives with no choice but…what? Political suicide? Movement leaders remember that shunning Nixon didn’t save the Republicans after Watergate. the only way the movement stays alive now is to stand by the president and hope to weather it out (risking a historic, epic flameout), or go back in time and nominate McCain instead. The other choices all involve wilderness.
Sharper minds already recognize that choosing the movement at this point represents a false choice, like choosing to keep a gangrenous leg. The more conservatives prop up the president’s wing of the GOP the harder it will become to separate his stink from the party brand. Sometimes, when you least expect it, circumstances call for a little creative destruction.
***Update***
Apologies to all of the Ted Olsens out there, who as far as I know did not write amusingly foot-shooting pieces for the American Spectator. The text has been edited to correctly identify the former Solicitor General.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
My money’s on Brownback to restore honor, integrity, and blowjoblessness to the White House.
I sure hope he gets nominated, anyway.
srv
Good catch.
If there’s anything that’s consistent about Republicans, It’s the Hypocrisy, Stupid.
teak111
So you’re saying any outrage expressed by either party in control of congress at the politiziation of the DOJ is BS because they all do it? Each party Fs with the DOJ while in the WH and each party expresses outrage over it when in control of congress. What does that say for the Rule of Law, an ideal that sounded so important before I read this post; Federal prosecuters being above the political fray, but its all BS no matter who is in charge. I think my cherry just popped. I feel dirty.
Tsulagi
Like that hasn’t happened in other departments and agencies? CIA under Porter Goss, Pentagon under Rummy, Homeland Security under Chertoff, and probably all the others?
The retards have left no stone unturned that they haven’t already put slime underneath.
Punchy
Tsulagi nailed it. This is just ONE department, whose actions have been highly dissected and analyzed. But how many other departments have been crony-ified?
I remember reports in the past 2 years that now lead me to believe the FDA, USDA, Forestry Service, and EPA are similarly FUBARed. If there ever was a year Congress deserved its raise, it’s this one. They may need to pull some all-nighters to square all these myriad investigations.
OT: Why did the “Colored Threat Meter” yo-yo every few months for years, and now it hasn’t been moved…well…since the election, right? Why aren’t the Repubs touting this “relative safe” period of yellow (green? blue? what the fuck color are we now?)?
Zifnab
If the Republicans learned on thing since Nixon, its how to lie through their teeth as convincingly as possible. Bush 43’s great sin is that he’s such a bad liar. Reagan and Bush 41 did a much better job of deceiving the American Public when it came to raiding the National Treasury and poisoning the public discourse. (They also practiced a little thing called restraint, but that’s neither here nor there).
Of course, Watergate was a somewhat different animal because America was coming off of Roosevelt and Eisenhower, steeped in the glory and honor of an amazing run of Presidental leadership. By the time Johnson and Nixon rolled around, America didn’t have the cynicism necessary to handle them.
So the question now is whether Americans will have built up the proper wariness of government and false promises, of lying and cheating and stealing, the proper amount of “trust-but-verify” style shrewdness to elect a new set of leaders we can trust. If we have, the old guard Republicans can start packing for their wilderness romp. If we haven’t, expect us to run this same rollercoaster ride of bullshit and stupidity in eight or twelve years.
srv
In his own words, Olsens non-partisan bondafides:
After travelgate, whitewater, yada, yada, what did they dredge up the stuck? Apparently, he thinks it’s the imperative of the newly-elected presidents former Federal DA to dig up shit on them. That’s what he thinks integrity is? Color us surprised.
Apparently, Bill and Hitlery new exactly what the Scaife plan was from day one. Imagine what would have happened had they not been proactive? I don’t have any problem with GW firing 93 Bill appointees. I do have a problem with it being WH political office operation.
Say what you want to about Reno (I hate her guts, myself), but she wasn’t a syncophant like Abu.
Pb
Ah, those were the days.
caustics
The other %28: “It is not enough to obey the gangrenous leg, you must love it and get used to the smell”.
Tim F.
These days I hear more often what sounds like, “look, nobody has criticized the gangrenous leg more than I have. But the volume and the incivility from the amputation crowd just makes them sound like refleive leg-haters.”
chopper
IOKIYAR.
Pb
We can’t abandon the leg now after all the strides it has made, the leg is improving, but it has to get worse before it gets better. However, we can’t give a prognosis, lest we embolden the rusty nails! If we cut and limped now, then there’d be no one to stop them, and then everyone’s legs would be gangrene, you defeatists!
tBone
Reno helped her lesbian lover Hillary murder Vince Foster. What has Gonzales done that’s comparable? Nothing, that’s what. You Leftards are so hypocritical.
tBone
Reno helped her lesbian lover Hillary murder Vince Foster. What has Gonzales done that’s comparable? Nothing, that’s what. You Leftards are so hypocritical.
Dreggas
but if we don’t fight the gangrene on the leg now we’ll be fighting the gangrene on the abdomen!!!
Stooleo
“Movement leaders remember that shunning Nixon didn’t save the Republicans after Watergate. the only way the movement stays alive now is to stand by the president and hope to weather it out (risking a historic, epic flameout), or go back in time and nominate McCain instead. All of the other choices involve wilderness.”
Bush is a sinking ship and he’s dragging the Republican Party down with him. The only way the party survives is if they impeach him and Cheney, and then hope Pelosi screws up everthing.
Nasty business amputating a leg, and even when its off, its no guarantee of survival.
RareSanity
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Oh wait, I already do…RSS is the greatest!
caustics
Those would be your squishy types on low-impact sites like Redstate. They don’t love the leg unconditionally.
Zombie Santa Claus
Why don’t we hear more about the leg that isn’t gangrenous?
Anyway, Clinton had a gangrenous Clenis, yet you moonbats were fine with that.
Rome Again
Orange, we shall always be at orange, unless we are at red. Pay no attention to those other colors, they were only put there to make the chart pretty.
Rome Again
Correcting myself. Whoops, I was wrong.
Orange is only for flights. All else is at yellow now. But, forget ever seeing blue or green.
ThymeZone
Great, great post, to a great thread.
Kudos.
Jimmmm
Olson at that time thought he was on the inside track to be W’s AG.
Poor Ted. The number 93’s just been so unlucky for him…
Tax Analyst
This’ll scare ’em better…
Jimmmm
I say we follow the current medical course of action for another Friedman Unit. If it’s not better by then, we’ll give a speech denouncing the Dems.
Zifnab
When we’re at Terror Alert Level Orange, that means we’re at War with Eurasia, right?
Also, all this talk of Orange requires me to give an obligatory GO HORNS!
Chad N. Freude
Corrected.
Nikki
Dear gawd, I am so ashamed that this made me giggle.
Aaron
WARNING: ADMISSION OF COMPLETE LACK OF REPUBLICAN INTEGRITY IMMINENT:
” In the unimaginable circumstance that a Republican president would violate these priciples in the most flagrant way possible, that leaves loyal conservatives with no choice but…what? Political suicide?”
For gosh sakes, dont stand up for whats right under any circumstances.
Steve
Call me a humorless liberal, but that was ridiculously inappropriate.
RSA
It’s only a flesh wound.
langx
Bush is a sinking ship and he’s dragging the Republican Party down with him. The only way the party survives is if they impeach him and Cheney, and then hope Pelosi screws up everthing.
Exactly. Its their only chance.
They will have to impeach Bush to save themselves.
They wont do it. The ship is sinking and they have no life boats.
Andrew
It’s Loyalty Day, you unpatriotic commie fuckers!
Karl Olson
Well, if you can’t spell Ted Olson’s name correctly [it’s OlsOn, not OlsEn], you make it more difficult for reasonable people, including myself, to take you seriously.
uh_clem
“The only way the party survives is if they impeach him and Cheney, and then hope Pelosi screws up everthing.”
“Exactly. Its their only chance.”
Actually, the best thing the Republican leaders could do for themselves at this point would be to shoot him. Make him a hero and nominate Jeb to carry on bravely in the face of the “horrible actions of a lone unnamed terrorist who cruelly cut down a brave man in his prime.”
No, I don’t actually think that they’re that hardcore “realpolitik”, but it would be a darn successful strategy, with not all that much collateral damage (i.e. one person.)
A modest proposal ™.
Tim F.
Well, I certainly make it difficult for people named Olson to take me seriously. Also, if you think my observations are unreasonable then I don’t think you have a terribly firm claim on reasonableness.
But thanks for the correction.
Karl Olson
Thanks for making the correction. Now I look forward to reading your piece without getting distracted. [I hadn’t yet formed any opinion re your observations.]
And I also thank you for contributing to American democracy through your blog.
George Arndt
But remember, he was talking about President Clinton, not Bush. In the right wing Universe, only centrists and liberal Presidents must have respect for checks and balances.
Davis X. Machina
Movement conservatism is a team. There’s about as much ‘principle’ involved as there is in being a Milwaukee Brewers fan.