The Little Dissembler is Dead, Long Live the Little Dissembler

Mr. Gonzalez's resignation, a long time coming, should be greeted as the good thing it is. It shouldn't be turned into a character assassination, with mandatory gestures to Gonzalez's background and the Algerian upward arc manifested through his striving and hard work. There will be pronouncements about Gonzalez's active role in eroding American ideals in the hopes of being able to protect Americans. I suspect there will be some commentators whose excoriations are laced with satisfaction and even glee. That's fine and expected from someone who's entered into an explicitly adversarial role. What sticks, for me, is this image of Gonzalez encouraging bedrest-bound John Ashcroft to sign off on renewal of the "secret" surveillance program. According to Eggers/Kane of WaPost (5/16/07),

Ashcroft, summoning the strength to lift his head and speak, refused to sign the papers they had brought.

Now, I'm not averse to some unexpected fucking character development - Shakespeare was a trenchant guy and he sure has dilated my skull's conceptual grid in terms of recognizing from what far fields tragic opportunities may arise - but not in ten suns' lifetimes would I have pictured Ashcroft, wan and sickly, in intensive care, interceding on behalf of the Constitution (recall, if you will, the creepy lighting of his press conference from Russia as he claimed Jose Padilla had planned to set off a dirty bomb). And I guess I take the Ashcroft episode to serve as a object lesson in the risks that come with relying on, and believing in, the myopic caricatures of public figures as Golem figures devoid of any worthy human sentiment.

To me, Gonzalez was the kind of guy who always talked with his hands behind his back, possibly with crossed fingers, or else just to make you wonder what the hell is with the guy who seems so timid and balls-less and yet who has the brass temerity to act as if he really doesn't recall/doesn't remember/doesn't know the answers to all these questions of material importance to the singularly important department he is supposed to be heading. His testimony in front of the Judiciary Committee is of the career suicide variety, and any lasting legitimacy he may have coveted seems to have a half-life equal to one of the polyps on Bush's colon. That said, despite all appearances, Gonzalez is a person, and without either forgetting his lamentable conduct or succumbing to soft profile idiocies, there is something sort of sad about all this. It's like we are witnessing the downfall of someone who thought he might get away with something he really thought was honorable and worthy, and who did a bunch of dishonorable, unbecoming things to try to protect this other thing.

We'll see how it turns out. One thing is for sure - there won't be a reply of Labor Secretary Ray Donovan's 1987, "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?" Any face-saving gesture went stale and futile a long time ago.