The Washington Post reports today that House and Senate Democrats have chosen political spectacle rather than accept a White House offer that allows aides to be interviewed privately by congress. At issue is the firing of eight U.S. attorneys who, as political appointees, serve at the pleasure of the President. By inserting itself into executive branch personnel decisions, congress sets the stage for a constitutional confrontation.
White House officials held firm to Bush's offer to turn over thousands of pages of correspondence and to make the aides available only for private interviews and not under oath, with limited questions and no transcriptions. White House spokesman Tony Snow called that offer "extraordinarily generous."
The choice facing Congress is plain, he said: "You want to get at the truth? Or do you want to create a political spectacle?"
Reply:
A House panel authorized subpoenas yesterday for top White House and Justice Department aides, including White House counselor Karl Rove, setting up a constitutional clash with the Bush administration over the U.S. attorneys investigation.
Opinion Journal weighing in on the subject today concluded that the intent of congress is to cripple the Bush Presidency for the final two years he is in office.
U.S. attorneys are "political appointees," and so by definition can be replaced for political reasons. If San Diego's Carol Lam was out of step with the Administration's priorities on immigration enforcement, or New Mexico's David Iglesias was judged insufficiently aggressive on voter fraud, then it was entirely appropriate for the President to replace them with officials more in line with his views. What's the alternative? Presumably, Mr. Bush's Congressional critics would have him--and his successors, Republican and Democratic--preside over political appointees who are unaccountable to anyone except Congress.
What would be genuine grounds for outrage is if a U.S. attorney were dismissed to interfere with a specific prosecution, or to protect some crony. This was the root of our objection, in 1993, to Janet Reno's dismissal (at Webster Hubbell's instigation) of all 93 U.S. attorneys in his Administration's earliest days. But there is no such evidence involving any of the eight Bush attorneys.
When congressional Democrats were in the minority it became routine for them to oppose the administration position, whatever it happened to be at the time. When the administration favored a smaller military footprint in Iraq, congressional Democrats argued there weren't enough troops. Now that the administration has changed course and sent in more troops, the Democratic response is to demand withdrawal.
With their new majority, Democrats have upped the ante. Opposition now takes the form of congressional subpeonas and Democrats are ready to create the constitutional confrontation. But to do so over a matter that is so firmly within authority of the executive branch is confrontation for its own sake.
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