December 13, 2007
ABA Journal Not Above Usual Magazine Stunts
It's a sort of truism in lawyering circles that if you become a household name, you're doing something very wrong. This week, the ABA Journal has several cases in point.
In an apparent bid to show that it can compete with general-interest rags in cover-shot gimmickry, the usually super-serious magazine of the American Bar Association has named former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as its 2007 Lawyer of the Year... and Gonzales' successor Michael Mukasey as 2008's Lawyer of the Year.
"The top legal story of 2007 was unquestionably the unraveling of support for the Bush administration's expansive view of presidential power during wartime, and with it, the slow-motion destruction" of Gonzales, ABA Journal's cover story reasons. "And now, all those problems have been dumped in the lap of the new AG.... How he'll deal with them -- in the middle of a presidential campaign, no less -- promises to make him the top legal newsmaker of 2008."
Certainly, Gonzales' collapse is one of the biggest stories of 2007. But Lawyer of the Year?
If Gonzales had been taken seriously in legal circles, maybe. But he has been considered a lightweight since his days as a George W. Bush-appointed state Supreme Court judge in Texas. When Bush nominated Gonzales to be U.S. attorney general 2005, no one complained more loudly (albeit, off the record) than Republicans who doubted "Gonzo" had what it took to be an effective AG. These same Republicans successfully warned Bush away from keeping Gonzales on his U.S. Supreme Court short list.
Most of the Beltway was jubilant when Gonzales finally announced his resignation in August. ABA Journal's publisher, Edward Adams, insisted the magazine wasn't making a cheap play on anti-Gonzo schadenfreude. "We're not saying Gonzales is good or bad. We're just saying this is the leading newsmaker in our part of the world," he told the Washington Post.
But the DOJ's wiretapping/attorney firings/torture crises are arguably just as political as they are legal in nature. Moreover, there isn't one DOJ insider who would describe Gonzales as the brains behind the Bush administration's war on terror policies. The consensus in this town is he was a pawn. An underqualified, unassertive pawn.
Runners-up to the dubious honor bestowed on Gonzales are Michael Nifong (disgraced Duke rape case prosecutor), I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (disgraced White House aide), Monica Goodling (disgraced DOJ aide) and Howard K. Stern (um, lawyer/husband of Anna Nicole Smith). Scroll down to the Comments section of the cover story, and there are way more unhappy than not ABA Journal readers. Hardly scientific, but most of the comments go something like this one, from Robert Purcell: "Alberto Gonzales has harmed the profession and the nation. The ABA article makes a bad situation worse. The ABA Journal needs to remember that without the broad support of the legal profession, you become irrelevant."
And this, from "Ken": "I would think that John McKay and David Iglesius... both fired for political reasons by the Bush DOJ, would find a place on this list ahead of party hacks like Monica Goodling."
Posted at 1:25 PM
Posted to:
Alberto Gonzales, Attorney Scandal, Bush Administration, Michael Mukasey, President Bush
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