A Good Thing

by digby

Gonzales, a friend and adviser to Bush since their days in Texas, calls their close relationship “a good thing.”

“Being able to go and having a very candid conversation and telling the president: ‘Mr. President, this cannot be done. You can’t do this,’ — I think you want that,” Gonzales told reporters this week. “And I think having a personal relationship makes that, quite frankly, much easier always to deliver bad news.”

“Do you recall a time when you (were) in there and said, ‘Mr. President, we can’t do this?'” Gonzales was asked.

“Oh, yeah,” the attorney general responded.

“Can you share it with us?” a reporter asked.

“No,” Gonzales said.

I think Gonzales was fibbing. Again. He didn’t get to where he is in the Bush outfit by giving Junior bad news. He doesn’t like bad news:

Bush’s bubble has grown more hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news–or tell him when he’s wrong. Bush has never been adroit about this. A youngish aide who is a Bush favorite described the perils of correcting the boss. “The first time I told him he was wrong, he started yelling at me,” the aide recalled about a session during the first term. “Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, ‘All right. I understand. Good job.’ He patted me on the shoulder. I went and had dry heaves in the bathroom.”

As Steve Benen points out, it’s hard to know which is worse, that the AG is lying again or that Bush actually proposed things that were worse than what Gonzales approved.

Gonzales’ job as White House counsel was not to give the president legal advice and his job as Attorney General is not to tbe the top law enforcement officer and lawyer for the United States government. His job, in both positions, was to provide legal cover for whatever Bush and Cheney wanted to do.

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