Firing Attorneys: Bush v. Clinton

My friend Chad at CCK urges me to be more honest about the pseudo-scandal involving the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys by the Bush Administration.  I quoted the Wall Street Journal, which compared the firing of these eight attorneys to Bill Clinton's firing of all 93 U.S. Attorneys.  Chad thinks this is dishonest.

You know that when Clinton came into office and "fired" all the U.S. Attorneys, it was quite a different situation than firing them when they were your own appointees.

It seems like only yesterday that Chad was accusing us of "hero worship" regarding Bush.

Dear Leader can do no wrong, and when he does, blame it on others because Dear Leader can do no wrong.

But apparently Chad thinks that Bill Clinton could do no wrong.  Slick Willie lied before a grand jury?  That's okay, because it was about sex, and apparently one can lie about that in court.  He fired all 93 U.S. attorneys, some of whom where actively investigating him and his political allies?  That's okay too.  Because they were appointed by someone else.  If Clinton can do no wrong, apparently Bush can do nothing right.  It is very bad, I gather, for a Republican President to fire people he has appointed.  Why?  Chad doesn't say. 

This is not an irrelevant distinction.  A President may wish to replace someone appointed by a predecessor because he wants someone else who shares his priorities.  Fine.  But that makes it just as reasonable to fire someone he himself has appointed if that person doesn't in fact serve his agenda.  If he promises to crack down on voter fraud, and an attorney he appointed refuses to do so, well, that's the whole point of the firing power, isn't it?

It is a settled matter of constitutional law that a President can remove executive branch officials for whose conduct the President is responsible.  Otherwise the President could escape responsibility for their conduct.  If they aren't enforcing civil rights law, or immigration law, he could say: "hey, I can't touch them!"  At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick and Jack Goldsmith explain why U.S. Attorneys are and ought to be removable by the President.  They note that Congress has considered and rejected, for these good reasons, the institution of an independent Justice Department. 

Contrary to Chad's principle (which I suspect would be dropped like a hot potato if it were applied to President Hillary) it doesn't matter whether the President originally nominated that official or not.  The U.S. Attorneys are part of one of the two political branches.  They are political appointees.  There was in fact nothing wrong with Bill Clinton sacking the whole 93 of them.  Likewise, there is nothing illegitimate about Bush sacking eight of them. 

And contrary to Chad's charges of hero worship, I think that the Bush administration has handled this matter in a very incompetent way.  Instead of boldly exercising his constitutional prerogative, it looks like General Gonzales lied to Congress about what he had done and was doing.  If he did, that may cost him his job.  But that is an altogether different issue from the firing itself.