So Gonzo is Gonzo. This move can hardly come as a shock to anyone (at least not if your reading this here.) My question is how will this effect the battle between the White House and Congress over the failure of witnesses to appear when subpoenaed, or the White House failure to turn over various documents (including the "missing" e-mails, documents relating to the U.S. Attorney firings, documents relating to Hatch Act Violations by Karl Rove's office, documents relating to "Energy policy" meetings with Oil Company execs., documents relating to illegal racial profiling prior to the 2004 election in Florida, etc....) How will Alberto Gonzalez's resignation effect these battles? Sadly, I don't think the issue will even come up in the analysis of his resignation.
(More beneath the fold)
My own personal view is this will simply buy the Administration a new round of excuses. Whomever is names, be it Chertoff or even Clement (the current Solicitor General) will as there first act, most likely request time to "examine the issues" before taking a stance. The White House will not retract its clear statement that it will not "allow" any contempt citations to be enforced by the Justice Department, the political appointees who replaced those attorneys that were fired will remain in their jobs, and the fired attorneys will remain either unemployed or in their new jobs.
Basically, I feel nothing will change. The Bush Administration is no longer interested in public approval, or in the "appearance of impropriety". They have taken various actions to move the political agenda of Karl Rove forward, and despite all the resignations, all the hearings and all the investigations, nothing has been done to fix the damage that has been done.
We may have succeeded in slowing the spread of the disease, however our focus needs to be on curing it and ridding ourselves of the symptoms. None of the actions taken to date even address reversing the damage done to our nation through the actions taken by these recent resignees.
Please convince me I am wrong in the comments.