As a Missourian I have been embarresed at his tenure as Attorney General. I hope the President puts someone more qualified and more open in the position.
Unfortunately its likely the President will get rid of Powell as well.
To bad he can't clean out Rhumsfeld instead.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:Unfortunately its likely the President will get rid of Powell as well.
It is not so much that Bush is 'getting rid' of Powell, it is that Powell said from the start that he only wanted to do one term. He really was not all that eager to do even that. The republican party has tried to pull him into politics and to get him to attempt a presidential run, but he has refused that as well. He says his wife is to worried about assasination.
In more recent months though, there has been talk that Powell may be willing to continue as the sec state for another term. Things are a bit up in the air at this point though. I would not be surprised to see some shake ups in the cabinet. I'd like to see Rumsfield go, but I don't know how likely that is. I would be very surprised to see Rice go anywhere. I think she did a great job in the 9/11 hearings...and would not be all that surprised to see her make a run for pres in 2008. I don't know that she could win the nomination, but she is a very possible VP candidate.
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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quote: Many Republicans think both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell will leave, if not immediately, then after a reasonable interval.
Pentagon officials have indicated Rumsfeld plans to remain defense secretary into Bush's second term.
Seems like no one knows.
Also, I saw something earlier, that it appears they have now corrected, which said Ashcroft would be turning in his resignation at the beginning of the second term. (Now they are saying he'll do it within a couple of weeks.) However, when the story was first out, it was just that he would be turning it in at the beginning of the president's second term, which made me scratch my head because all the Cabinet members turn in their resignations at that point and time.
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Since you clearly don't like Ashcroft due to his politics as opposed to his competence what makes you as liberals think his replacement will be any more acceptable to you?
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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My dad at least dislikes Ashcroft because he finds him to be incompetent. My father's general take on politics is to despise both sides and he says he would respect Bush a lot more if Ashcroft and Rumsfield were gone.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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There are so many things to dislike about Ashcroft, I don't know where to begin. But the instant he started worrying about naked statues I knew we had been given a man who had no sense of perspective and who was not to be trusted leading anything.
The fact that this man oversees domestic intelligence networks just seems like an obvious mistake.
Had it been my administration, the instant he came out about artwork, I would've dropped him and apologized to the American people for letting an obvious nut job into a position of power.
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Well, the fact that Bush appointed Ashcroft after he lost the Senate race to a dead man should put Bush in the nut job category, if you ask me. Hell, Ashcroft is an embarrassment to Missouri, but at least they had the sense to elect a dead man over him.
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Good job, attack perceived stupidity with more stupidity. How was Ashcroft supposed to beat the dead guy? Voters knew they were voting for his wife and how would Ashcroft possibly run a successful campaign?
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Since you clearly don't like Ashcroft due to his politics as opposed to his competence what makes you as liberals think his replacement will be any more acceptable to you?
I don't know if you should seperate his politics and his competence, but I don't think that his replacement will be any more acceptable to me.
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The "Woo hoo" is really naive, Bush doesn't even have to get reelected and with a larger majority in both houses of Congress he can get whomever he wants to take over.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Oh, please, nfl--my "woo hoo" is naive? You're really grasping at straws here. I have a personal and visceral dislike of Ashcroft and his policies, and I'm happy to see him go. What's naive about that?
Of course, his replacement's policies could be as bad or worse from my POV, but that doesn't mean I can't be happy now.
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Its the same idea as cheering for a George Bush impeachment, it would only mean Cheney would become president.
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And this amounts to another reason why the Dems lost and the GOP won. You fail to see the bigger picture. Cheney has no political ambition and has little care for how people see him. His sole priority would be to push his agenda. From a liberal perspective you're cheering about going from the frying pan to the fire.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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nfl, you just aren't understanding me: I can be happy that an extremist attorney general has resigned EVEN THOUGH his replacement could be as bad or worse. My emotions are not equivalent to my analysis of the situation.
By the same token, I could be very happy if Bush were impeached, even though Cheny took over--more so, because the resulting shock would likely leave the right in disarray, as they were in '76 when Ford was easily defeated.
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First of all, Cheney wouldn't run for reelection. Second, its still naive to he joyous about going from the frying pan and into the fire.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Congrats, nfl. You've managed to suck all my joy out of seeing Ashcroft resign--not with your lame arguements but with your bulldog insistence in attacking anything I post.
NFl for Attorney General! A worthy successor to to the flake who just resigned.
edit:thank you frisco, nfl was indeed needling me while chiding me for for not looking at the big picture. I shouldn't have let it get to me.
Ya'll liked Ashcroft. If there were some contention, maybe I'd have hope. But Ashcroft left for his own reasons. There is nothing stopping Bush from appointing another one of him, maybe a little younger, a little healthier.
I also don't expect Bush to do anything that he doesn't want to do. Reaching across the isle doesn't mean working with democrats who agree with you, but I'm of those non-realists who believes that give and take means giving up something, even if you don't have to.
posted
Gonzalez, the White House Council, is Bush's nominee to replace Ashcroft. First Hispanic AG if confirmed.
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I meant to make a joke early in this thread about how our next AG would be a gay, Hispanic woman with MS. Posts: 43 | Registered: Nov 2004
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By the way, Gonzales is getting a fairly positive review at a liberal blog. So, kudos to Bush for nominating what may be a 'moderate'.
quote: The apparent nomination of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General is a mixed blessing for progressives. It is fair to say that Gonzales is not nearly as bad as we might have expected. He is by no means a hard core ideologue, and he would not be likely to aggressively pursue a far right agenda. on his own By temperament he is a moderate, even if his views are far more conservative than we would wish. His record as a judge, while conservative, was not outrageous; indeed, it's commonly believed that he may not have been acceptable to the far right as a Supreme Court nominee. And what little leaks out of this Administration suggests that Gonzales was not a moving force behind most of the Administration's most outrageous legal positions.
But his failure to fight aggressively against some of those positions points up Gonzales' principal weakness, which is that he not likely to be a strong Attorney General, willing to stand up to the President and others within the Administration when it is required. Certainly nothing in his record as White House counsel suggests that he will have the independence necessary to preserve public faith in the nonpartisan nature of law enforcement. Rather, there is ground for fear that the Department - already highly politicized under Ashcroft - will become even more so because of Gonzales' close links to the White House. And there is also ground to fear that the White House will be able to have more influence over the course of sensitive political investigations than is appropriate.
A related issue is whether Gonzales, as an outsider coming from the White House, will be able to win the confidence of the career civil servants at the Department. Many of them have felt battered and isolated for the last four years. Ashcroft was surrounded by a group of highly political aides that was convinced that the civil servants were their enemy out to sabotage them. As a result many major decisions, ranging from gun control to terrorism, were made either without input from, or in the fact of input from, the career people at the Department. (That, in part, explains why many of those decisions were so bad - and I say that not only as a progressive but simply as a lawyer). Gonzales (unlike Larry Thompson, who in my mind would have been a superior choice) has no history at the Department, no reservoir of good will to draw upon. He will need quickly to demonstrate his independence from his former political bosses.
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