From the AP (via CNN), this morning:

Specter calls Gonzales testimony ‘very damaging’

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has hurt the Bush administration and the Justice Department with his poor handling of the firing of eight federal prosecutors, a leading Republican said Sunday.

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Gonzales was certainly undermining himself and his agency’s law enforcement efforts.

Also from the AP (also via CNN), also this morning:

Bush: Gonzales testimony ‘increased my confidence’
WASHINGTON — President Bush gave embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a strong vote of confidence on Monday despite scant support for him among key Republicans.

“This is an honest, honorable man, in whom I have confidence,” Bush said.

The president said that Gonzales’ testimony before skeptical Judiciary Committee senators last week “increased my confidence” in his ability to lead the Justice Department. Separately, a White House spokeswoman said, “He’s staying.”

Well, there you have it. And it’s time to officially close the books on the ol “Is President Bush really dumb or is he a shrewd operator playing dumb?” debate. Granted, those books have been closed before, but now it’s time to glue ‘em shut, wrap them in chains, padlock the chains, throw ‘em into a sack, and drop the sack into the ocean over the Mariana Trench where it will sink to the lowest, most remote depths on the planet, to be viewed only by strange, bulbous, slimy creatures with faintly glowing appendages (and who will also consider the whole thing “a no-brainer”).

Let’s remind ourselves that George W. Bush was the candidate that more Americans wanted to have a beer with, a criterion about as useful as selecting a Miss America based on how “easy” she looks. It wasn’t even a “Mr. Smith” scenario, in which America wanted to be led by a regular guy possessed of uncommon abilities; Bush didn’t seem to have those uncommon abilities. It wasn’t clear that he even had the more common ones. He just seemed like he wasn’t a smarty-pants.

He wasn’t. And in 2000, that was all that mattered. We’d just been through a rewarding but exhausting relationship with a very intense, complex guy. Bush seemed nice enough, and he really wanted to go out with us. What could possibly go wrong?

Like a lot of bad dates gone tragically awry, we found out the answer to that question nine months later. And all of the sudden we were stuck with the guy for the most difficult and consequential part of our lives. And that’s when the self-deception really kicked into gear.

Even from Democrats, the couple of years following September 11th were filled with talk of Bush being shrewd, pretend-dumb, or at least completely beholden to the ingenious, Machiavellian forces of Rove and Cheney. Or Rumsfeld. Ashcroft, maybe? Someone in there was supersmart and brilliantly using the tragic events of 9/11 to achieve their own well-thought-out political ends… Even people relentlessly opposed to the Administration didn’t want to believe that we were facing the new horror of international Islamist terrorism behind a dimwitted millionaire manchild and the Special Ed class he installed around him.

It’s time to believe it. Even a lot of the more intelligent people in the administration have special “challenges” that should have kept them out of the mainstream - particular obsessions or compulsions or desires that make them unable to see reality and unfit to serve. And even those defective autocrats are outnumbered by the rank-and-file of Pat Robertson Community College graduates who are barely capable of completing the paperwork that documents their larger incompetencies.

Could it be true? Could we be going to war because the guy on top is still mad on his Dad’s behalf and his friends either want to broaden their oil portfolios or test out a completely ill-conceived geopolitical hunch? And nobody’s got even the basic competence to effect those goals or evaluate our chances? Really? No. Somebody here has to know what they’re doing…

Nobody did. Nobody who was listened to, anyway. And the President who’d gotten as far as he had by trusting his “gut” reasoned he’d might as well continue to trust it (in fairness, his gut does seem to function a lot more efficiently than his head). He continues to trust it to this day, even as the leaders in his own party have stopped the whole “smiling and backing away” approach and have adopted a new “screaming and running” strategy.

The Libby thing, the Gonzales business, the climate change issue, even the Iraq War are just beginning to show us the tip of the iceberg of blind, selfish, cloddish incompetence that we’ve allowed into our highest offices. The Republicans who are now fleeing towards the exits bear some responsibility for so cynically backing the “most electable” guy in their midst, reasoning that putting their party back in charge was worth electing someone of questionable abilities. And the millions of Americans who voted for the guy and hundreds of reporters who covered him… everybody figured that if really was that dumb, then somebody would’ve stopped him…

Nobody did. Bush was a literally Texas leaguer, and he dropped right in there. And with a mighty, strong, firm, likable, from-the-gut “Duhh!” he will continue to provide unwavering leadership and hire people who are sadly, literally “like-minded.”

This isn’t news to many of you, of course. But watching Gonzales up on the stand and then watching the President’s response really brought it home for me. We’re being led by those kids at the lunch table who could barely be trusted not to plunge their pudding spoons into their own eyes. And they’ve got nukes.

About that beer…