Going, going, Gonzales

ALBERTO GONZALES, America’s beleaguered attorney-general, announced on Monday that he will quit the post on September 17th. His resignation is long overdue.

For months this legal lightweight battled critics who say he allowed the Justice Department, which he heads, to become politicized and used as a tool of the White House. Earlier in the summer Democrats talked of investigating him for perjury. Politicians from both parties had called for him to go.

Although the office of the attorney-general is independent of the White House, Gonzales has been a close friend of the president since George Bush was governor of Texas and Gonzales was his counsel. His departure is the latest high-profile defection from the Bush administration. Gonzales’s decision to stand down comes just two weeks after Karl Rove, the powerful White House adviser, offered his own resignation.

Gonzales’s trouble started in the spring. In 2006, the Justice Department fired eight United States attorneys. Several of these federal prosecutors came forward this year to complain that they had been fired for political reasons. One of the eight had successfully prosecuted a former Republican representative, for example. Another was booted out to make way for a friend of Rove’s.

These accusations chimed with Gonzales’s reputation for putting politics above principle.

In March Congress began an investigation in to the reasons for the firings. In his pathetic testimony, the attorney-general repeatedly contradicted his subordinates. He took refuge in ineptitude, saying that he could not recall dozens of relevant facts.

These inquiries brought to light charges that Gonzales was probably involved in yet another controversial incident. Had Gonzales, when he was White House counsel, tried to push a bedridden John Ashcroft, then the attorney-general, into approving a controversial wiretapping program? This scandal, heaped on top of the firings of the federal prosecutors, painted a sad picture of Gonzales and his Justice Department.

But Gonzales retained the support of the president, a man deeply loyal to his friends. Bush defended Gonzales by insisting that he had testified to Congress and “sent thousands of papers” to his tormentors and that there was no proof that he had done wrong. The president’s confidence in Gonzales’s services apparently outlasted that of the attorney-general himself. Gonzales had to fly out to Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, for a face-to-face lunch this weekend before the president reluctantly accepted the resignation.

In announcing his resignation to the press, Gonzales did not mention his recent struggles. He alluded to his tough upbringing in Humble, Texas, and said that he has “lived the American dream.” He was wise to focus on the past. His rise has always been the most, if not the only, impressive aspect of his career. Before he got into trouble by firing the prosecutors, he had gained notoriety for writing a string of questionable memos on how to expand executive power and circumventing the “quaint” Geneva Conventions.

Who will replace Gonzales? Bush is, so far, not saying. Michael Chertoff, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, is thought to have a reasonable shot at the post. But in Washington, DC, the slow summer days provide much opportunity for speculation.

There are two schools of thought. One is that Bush will try to find a nice, uncontroversial nominee that Congress will approve without much fuss. Others think Mr Bush still has some fight in him and will pick another loyalist.

In either case, the next attorney-general will probably do a better job than Gonzales.

It won’t take much to improve on his record.