A Look Back: Gonzales' Greatest Newspaper Hits

By: Sarah Weber The name of Alberto R. Gonzales -- the former attorney general who submitted his resignation Monday -- has been splattered across the nation's editorial pages for months now. In fact, there was little respite for Gonzales from U.S. papers ever since his nomination for attorney general in late 2004. But now that the former Attorney General's resignation is in, it's interesting to note which editorial boards cast a critical eye on him from the start.

In late 2004, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was under fire for the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib prison, as well as the accusations that such practices were widespread among the military's prisons and detention centers. Some papers greeted Bush's nomination of Alberto Gonzales, then a White House counsel, with tepid relief. What, some asked, could be worse than the regime of Ashcroft?

The San Francisco Chronicle, in a Dec. 12, 2004, editorial, wrote that Gonzales had "an inspiring story." He was "one of eight children of low-income laborers in San Antonio," had joined the Air Force to pay for college and ended up with a law degree from Harvard. In all, the Chronicle concluded from various accounts, "Gonzales is sharp in intellect, mild-mannered in temperament, and decidedly more moderate than Ashcroft on social issues such as abortion and affirmative action."

Then came the "but" clause. The editorial continue with a bulleted list of decisions made by Gonzales that were questionable, leading the Chronicle to be "concerned about whether Gonzales is the right fit to become the nation's attorney general."

Others were more blunt. The editorial page of the Los Angeles Times a month prior to the Chronicle's post was emblazoned with "Gonzales is a Disastrous Choice." While acknowledging that Gonzales would be the United States' first Latino attorney general, the Los Angeles Times wrote that Bush had missed a "golden opportunity" with his decision.

"He is a terrible choice," the Times concluded, due both to the now infamous torture memo that he wrote in 2002, which waived the rights under the Geneva Convention for suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan, and for his "zealous" support of the Patriot Act. At the time, the L.A. Times was a rarity in its outright reproach of Gonzales.

As Gonzales' approval for the post drew closer, more papers began questioning his dodgy answers on torture and looked more closely at his decisions. The New York Times, one of the papers that devoted the most editorial space over these past three years to Gonzalez, was already wary, having dug into his past as counsel to President George W. Bush when the latter was governor of Texas. "The attorney general does not merely head up the Justice Department," the Times wrote on Jan. 26, 2005. "He is responsible for ensuring that America is a nation in which justice prevails." Based on his past record, the paper concluded, Gonzales was "unqualified to take on this role," and "the Senate should reject his nomination."

The Boston Globe was on the same page as its parent company, The New York Times Co. "Unfit as Attorney General," the editorial page declared on Jan. 18, 2005. As "chief law enforcement officer of the nation," Gonzales' record was too tainted by the torture memos and support of questionable interrogation methods to assume that office.

The Chicago Tribune was tepid in its approval of Gonzales. On Jan. 9, 2005, with a sort of literary shrug, the Tribune ran an editorial with the headline "An Adequate Attorney General." The Trib's prediction was that "Gonzales will most likely perform respectably as attorney general." But the paper added, "Is this the best we can do?"

Throughout the confirmation period of 2005, other papers such as The Denver Post, USA Today, The Washington Post, and the Houston Chronicle announced their trepidation about Gonzales' appointment, but only went so far as to ask Congress to be exceedingly careful and forthright in its examination of him before granting its approval. Certainly none went so far as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which demanded on Feb. 3, 2005, that Congress say "No on Gonzales." As in the Chronicle in 2004, the Post-Dispatch placed a bulleted list for its readers in the editorial, stating through example after example why Gonzales "is not fit to be the nation's top legal officer."

The following year, 2006, saw the patience of some newspapers wearing thin. The New York Times, which had earlier voiced its wariness of Gonzales' approval for attorney general, now saw reason for a severe tongue-lashing when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2006. In the editorial, titled "The Art of Saying Nothing," the Times came out swinging: "We thought President Bush's two recent Supreme Court nominees set new lows when it came to giving vague and meaningless answers to legitimate questions, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made them look like models of openness when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday about domestic spying."

Finding the Attorney General's refusal to state whether "any purely domestic communications had been swept up" in the wiretapping program "absurd" and "ludicrous," the Times continued in its progression toward outright disapproval of Gonzales.

In March 2007, Gonzales became fodder for almost every major U.S. newspaper's Op-Ed pages. The cause was the Justice Department's firing of a group of U.S. attorneys, and the bungled defense for doing so offered by the Bush administration and Gonzales himself. "The Failed Attorney General," the New York Times declared on March 11. The Wall Street Journal deemed it a "Meltdown at Justice" the following day, though the paper pointed out that the Democrats who were assisting Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty in digging for "nefarious reasons" were the same Democrats who "didn't raise a whimper" when Clinton-era Attorney General Janet Reno "sacked all 93 US attorneys in one unclean sweep upon taking office." That, concluded the Journal, "was a more serious abuse than anything known about these Bush dismissals."

Falling in line with the Journal was The Washington Times, which also referred to the Reno "pink slips," and asked the Democrats to "drop their not-very-persuasive indignation." Taking it a step further, the Times asked Gonzales, "Why the tippy-toes and kid gloves? What Gonzales should have said to Congress in defense of the firings was, 'These appointees do not fit the president's vision for America, and we're firing them to make room for those who do.'"

On March 16, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times and the Boston Globe both gave Gonzales a pink slip of his own in nearly identical editorial headlines: "Gonzales Should Go" and "Alberto Gonzales Should Go." Soon, the sentiment snowballed: "Help Wanted; What's Needed in the Next Attorney General" (The Washington Post, March 19); "Poor Performance; The Attorney General Failed the Test Yesterday; It's Time for Him to Go" (Newsday, April 20); "Gonzales Gets the Message to Go" (San Francisco Chronicle, April 20); "Loyal to a Fault" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 22); "After Gonzales; The Attorney General Should Go. In His Place We Need Someone Tough Enough to Reject Partisan Overtures" (Los Angeles Times, April 23); "The Man Who Wasn't There" (Chicago Tribune); "Gonzales' Credibility Fading" (The Denver Post, May 22).

Though the St. Petersburg Times and the Boston Globe were two of the papers to first call for Gonzales' resignation, it is also impressive to note the amount of newshole filled by the New York Times with the name Gonzales. The year 2007 saw a flurry of attacks from the Times on Gonzales, all of which carried barbed headlines and lengthy examples supporting the need for Gonzales' removal from office: "Politics, Pure and Cynical" (March 14); "The Rovian Era" (April 1); "Gonzales v. Gonzales" (April 20); "A Feeble Performance" (May 12); "Why This Scandal Matters" (May 21); "Mr. Gonzales' Never-Ending Story" (July 29).

Fittingly enough, today's New York Times editorial, titled "The House Lawyer Departs," holds no punches either. The first line reads: "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has finally done something important to advance the cause of justice. He has resigned."