Club Troppo

Thx to to Ric Simes for sendinng me the link to this piece in the New Yorker bemoaning the Bush Govt’s lack of accountability.  As Ric said it is all of a piece with my bemoaning ‘he said - she said’ journalism.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s admission that mistakes were made in the firing of eight United States attorneys had the air of a schoolboy hoping that bogus contrition would get him off the hook. “I accept full responsibility,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee, meaning only that he was sorry he had allowed the matter to become such a nuisance. He spent the next five hours explaining—through repeated memory failure and a steady refusal to acknowledge the contradictions and lies in which he kept entangling himself—why he bore no responsibility for anything else. Afterward, the President praised Gonzales for his “very candid assessment” and said that it “increased my confidence in his ability to do the job.” This is unaccountability as pure chutzpah, and so far it seems to be working.

Of course we’ve had a pro at the game in this country.  Someone perfectly adapted to the art of saying highly misleading things with a body language extravagant with truth telling.