Sen. Dianne Feinstein offers up what she must this morning: an op-ed in the LA Times "explaining" her decision to vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee to send on the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to the full Senate for approval.
Here's the "meat" of it:
Judge Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales.
Ta-da!
To be "fair," Feinstein and the Times claim there's more. And there is. There are more words. You can go and read the ones she's wrapped the dead fish of Gonzales' ghost in if you like. But they're all window dressing.
As is the nomination of a "new Attorney General."
David Addington is the Attorney General of the United States. As he was during the "tenure" of Alberto Gonzales.
But Judge Mukasey, as Senator Feinstein helpfully points out in seven of her 750 words on the subject of her assent to the world-changing theory of the unitary executive, is not Alberto Gonzales.
The funny thing -- besides the fact that the entire population of the world minus one is also "not Alberto Gonzales" -- is that even Alberto Gonzales wasn't really Alberto Gonzales. He was David Addington. As Judge Mukasey will "be." As any nominee confirmed to the position of "Attorney General" will be.
Here are 48 more words from Senator Feinstein:
I believe that Judge Mukasey is the best nominee we are going to get from this administration and that voting him down would only perpetuate acting and recess appointments, allowing the White House to avoid the transparency that confirmation hearings provide and to diminish effective oversight by Congress.
These 48 are equally pointless, as I wrote yesterday in reaction to Senator Feingold offering us the same shopworn platitude. It doesn't actually occur to anyone that it might have independent meaning that this phrase is indeed shopworn by now?
The point here is that it is meaningless to say that Judge Mukasey or anyone else "is the best nominee we are going to get." It's only a meaningful method of evaluation if this nominee or any nominee really will be able to function independently as Attorney General, and all evidence points to the contrary. We may all come to different conclusions about where Judge Mukasey would like to take the Department if he had his 'druthers, but that's neither here nor there. Not in the age of the "unitary executive" and his "inherent powers."
And that, ultimately, is why the question really never should have been one about torture in particular, though that's an easily grasped concept that makes a good rallying point. Rather, the question should always have been about the rule of law. Nothing is more fundamental to the functioning of the country, and no concept ought to be more central to a nominee for Attorney General.
But Judge Mukasey told the Senate Judiciary Committee point blank that he wasn't going to be much help there, either.
In reaction to which, Senator Feinstein hopes we will agree with her that he's not Alberto Gonzales.
This is not so clear to me.
Neither should it be clear to Senator Feingold, who was certain that the man who isn't not-Alberto Gonzales -- that is, Alberto Gonzales -- was simply lying to him when he asked him at his January 2005 confirmation hearing whether he believed the president's "inherent powers" allowed him to ignore federal law.
And yet, though Judge Mukasey has done nothing to clarify that concept or even distance himself from it, Senator Feingold tells us just as helpfully as Senator Feinstein that Mukasey, "may be the best nominee we can get from this administration."
While not quite as stunningly stupid as Feinstein's observation that Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey do not share the same corporeal form, it is nonetheless just as useless. Michael Mukasey, like Alberto Gonzales before him, is at the same time both the best and the worst possible nominee. Is there really any fairer way to describe placeholders like these two? So long as the Justice Department remains a wing of the White House and under the nominal control of David Addington, can any nominee who's not Addington really be evaluated as being "better" or "worse" than any other?
That Mukasey can fairly be said to be the "best" we can expect is very nearly as meaningless and silly as the observation that also doesn't happen to be some other person.
The World's Most Deliberative Body, ladies and gentlemen.