Via WaPo: Goodling Says She ‘Crossed the Line’
Monica M. Goodling, who resigned last month as Gonzales’s senior counselor and White House liaison, also told the House Judiciary Committee yesterday that she “crossed the line” by using political criteria in hiring a wide array of career professionals at Justice, including looking up political donations by some applicants.[...]
Goodling’s testimony about hiring practices amounts to a dramatic public admission that she and other Justice aides routinely used potentially illegal criteria in deciding whom to hire as career prosecutors, immigration judges and those in other nonpolitical government jobs.
“I do acknowledge that I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions and may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions,” she testified. “I regret these mistakes.”
This is highly problematic, to put it mildly.
It is clear that this situation was one of infusing politics of the wrong sort into the administration of justice. Yes, everything that happens in government is political, but there is a difference between “politics” as a pursuance of a specific sets of policy preferences and “politics” that exults loyalty of party as a key criteria for serving in a position that should be more about technical ability than which party or candidate one made contributions to.
Recall that part of what the e-mail dump about USA situation revealed was an interest in finding “loyal Bushies” not finding good attorneys who would well represent the US government in court.
It is noteworthy that Goodling’s job at the RNC was doing research on the opposition.
It appears she was pretty busy:
Under questioning from Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), Goodling repeatedly declined to estimate how many times she had considered political affiliations in career hiring decisions. Johnson finally asked whether it was more or fewer than 50 cases.“I don’t think that I could have done it more than 50 times, but I don’t know,” she replied.
And really, any parent is familiar with the following pattern, as with kids no one ever really did anything:
Goodling minimized her role in the controversial firings of nine U.S. attorneys last year and joined a long line of Justice officials who say they were not responsible for adding names to the lists of those to be dismissed.
I remember during the Clinton administration an ongoing theme amongst conservative commentators: a desire for “adults” to be in charge. How anyone who criticized the Clinton cabinet and staff for being overly immature can now defend this situation as anything other than a bunch of juveniles in charge of a key federal bureaucracy is beyond me.
I keep expecting the “Not Me” character from Family Circus to pop up at any moment.
Technorati Tags: Monico Goodling, Paul McNulty, DoJ, DoJGate, USAgate, USAs, US Attorneys
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May 24th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Ms Goodling seems to have parlayed a blindingly ingratiating smile and the rhetorical skills of the average 19-year-old into, what? The tenth highest position in our Justice Department?
Though I don’t know at what level on the organizational chart Ms Goodling would be located, I find it galling that she was in a position to pass judgement on the qualifications of the career employees who stand between me and the nationwide criminal enterprises that make up the business of the Justice Department.
“I believe I crossed the line, but I didn’t mean to.”
I’m not inclined to believe that a 31 year old attorney who came to her exalted position by way of one as an opposition researcher in the supercharged partisanship of the Republican political machine could be anywhere near that naive. I’ll believe that she “stepped over the line” but I’ll never believe that the overstepping was unintended.
May 24th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Monica Goodling, Politics, and Adult Supervision
Steven Taylor has two posts (here and here) on the revelations from yesterday’s testimony by former DoJ official Monica Goodling.
Aside from the obvious points about how it would be nice to have the people in charge of enforcing federal laws act…
May 24th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I remember during the Clinton administration an ongoing theme amongst conservative commentators: a desire for “adults” to be in charge.
I don’t recall this–who in the world in the Clinton administration was as inexperienced as Goodling?
May 24th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
That I couldn’t day. I do distinctly recall a lot of discussion about “adults”–aimed at perception that the baby boomers had come to town. There was also an initial flap at the start of the first Clinton term about some of the appointees within the WH having trouble with their security clearances.
There was also a broader attack on the notion that the Clinton admin wasn’t sufficiently serious in general.
May 24th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
There was also a broader attack on the notion that the Clinton admin wasn’t sufficiently serious in general.
Yeah, now I remember this. The charges, I think were pretty bogus. Although I think that that was due primarily to the generational change represented by Clinton. In fact, G.W. Bush probably escaped quite a bit of scruitny in this regard since Clinton governed rather successfully.
The difference, I think, between Clinton and Bush is that Bush favors “loyalty” which, of course, is the basis of patronage politics while Clinton seemed to be drawn more to policy wonks and intellectuals.
The genius of Bush’s political team was its ability to assert loyalty and anti-intellectualism as positive traits while denegrating merit, experience, and competence which generally marked his opponents for the presidency.