Battle heats up over fired US attorneys
Congress is threatening contempt citations, while President Bush claims executive privilege.
from the July 11, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
"On a case like this, does anyone believe the US attorney is going to bring a criminal contempt citation against anyone?" asked Sen. Arlen Specter (R) of Pennsylvania, ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a wire-service interview on Monday.
In addition, any legal process in this case would be a lengthy one. And the end of the Bush administration is in sight. In resisting congressional subpoenas on the prosecutor issue, White House officials may be attempting to run out the clock, says Professor Rozell.
Past presidents have sought compromise on executive-privilege issues in part to limit political damage. To the public, a privilege claim can make it seem as if the White House has something to hide.
But Bush, with low popularity ratings, may have little to lose, politically speaking – as shown by his commutation of the sentence of former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
"Perhaps he even sees this as an opportunity to make himself look strong," says Rozell.
There may be political dangers for Congress in this case as well, say some experts. Given Iraq, the failure of immigration legislation in the Senate, spiking gas prices, and other current problems of public policy, "to imagine that the public will focus intently on this one problem – well, it's not going to happen," says Norman Ornstein, a political scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
Thus the battle over fired attorneys could become for the Bush White House what the congressional investigation into the Iran-contra affair was for the Reagan administration – a long, draining legal exercise that causes eight years of life in the White House to end on a sour note.
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