Rohrabacher blasts the Bush administration

Always-outspoken Huntington Beach Rep. Dana Rohrabacher this week stepped into the latest Capitol Hill controversy, joining two other Republican members of Congress in calling for the dismissal of U.S. Atty. General Alberto Gonzales. Rohrabacher is displeased with how Gonzales — and the White House — handled the recent conviction of two border patrol agents, and the firing of eight U.S. attorneys has added fuel to the fire. Rohrabacher answered questions by phone Friday about Gonzales and President Bush.

Question: The fired federal prosecutors have been a news story for a while, and you’ve had other complaints with Gonzales’ performance. What convinced you he should be fired?

Answer: If it was just the U.S. attorneys, I would say we shouldn’t be calling the president’s appointee into question, but the fact is that the heavy-handed approach that the president used toward these U.S. attorneys reflects a pattern of arrogance in this administration, and those of us even in the Republican congress recognized a contempt of congressional oversight by this administration as compared to other administrations. We’ve seen an abuse of power by the FBI, we’ve seen an incredibly ruthless prosecution of [border patrol agents Ignacio] Ramos and [Jose] Compean. All of those things combined would signal that the president is not well served by having a very good buddy as attorney general rather than someone with a more professional focus. It is the job of the attorney general as the president’s legal counsel … to give direction and offer advice to the president, and to make sure that what he’s doing is both politically and legally advantageous to the president and the president’s authority, and the president has not been well served by Gonzales.

The president has every right to fire U.S. attorneys — in fact, maybe he should have done so the first day of his administration, the way Bill Clinton did…. He has every right to throw the book at border patrol agents while pardoning drug dealers. The fact that these things are happening would suggest to me that you’ve got Mr. Gonzales not being forceful enough to advise the president that he’s on the wrong track. For all we know, they could be Mr. Gonzales’ policies.

Q: Do you see yourself as breaking ranks with the president and the party?

A: I think the president broke ranks with the Republican Party on a lot of issues. He’s broken ranks with us; we’re not breaking ranks with him…. If this wasn’t part of what I saw as a pattern of arrogance, I wouldn’t be complaining at all. This is part of a pattern of the president’s stubbornness and heavy-handedness.

Q: You’ve also castigated the president for failing to pardon the two convicted border patrol agents and have threatened to call for impeachment if they’re killed in jail. Do you think Bush should be impeached?

A: If they’re murdered in jail, yeah, I do. If either one of these men is murdered in jail after it’s clear to the White House that they were in danger…. Hopefully that would never happen. That would really be something that would push me over the line, so I’m not calling for it now.

This White House had every opportunity to go to the judge and say, let these guys out pending appeal…. These guys are being treated worse than common criminals, and this is coming directly from the White House. It reflects a meanness and an arrogance that, if it results in a loss of life, it’s going to persist into an even bigger crisis for the president.

For four years, I’ve been the point man in defending the administration’s position in Iraq … and here I am, at loggerheads with the president, and that just shows how inept he is at dealing with people like me.

Q: What’s your assessment of the Bush administration’s overall performance, and what will its legacy be?

A: It is likely that the president’s only legacy will be that he was able to respond to the massive terrorist attack on the United States and was the guy who oversaw the counterattack, and that’s going to be his legacy. Hopefully we will defeat radical Islam in the meantime, and he will have some credit for that if we succeed.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

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