Patterico's Pontifications

To suggest that Goodling and Sampson blazed the trail on politicizing hiring in career positions would be a fantasy. Goodling was simply too ham-handed in the way she went about doing so.

But any political appointee in charge of hiring DOJ attorneys — such as the 93 Presidentially appointed US Attorneys — can very easily discern the political sympathies of their potential hires without asking them the kinds of questions Goodling asked.

As I said here when here conduct came into full view, there is no defending her, and there is no defending the administration officials that put her in charge of anything given her light-weight background. She is single-handedly responsible for my complete loss of faith in the Gonzales tenure as AG.

WLS (26b1e5) — 7/29/2008 @ 8:53 pm

I am shocked that there are partisan politics being practiced in DC!

Another Drew (8018ee) — 7/29/2008 @ 9:27 pm

I’ll give Mulkasy a lot of credit here, this was bad and he owned it without trying to explain it away. Hell I will give him credit generally. It seemed like for awhile under Gonzales there was a disturbing story about the DoJ every other day but after he took over I can’t recall a single scandal that wasn’t a hangover from the earlier days.

It’s a lesson I hope Obama and McCain learn. If you screen out the career lawyers using some sort of purity test you end up with worse lawyers and you tend to end up failing to perform in all sorts of litigation unconnected to the political bent of the lawyers. The highly qualified counter terrorism lawyer losing out to some scrub who passed Gooding’s ideological test is particularly chilling.

Quality career position lawyers aren’t idiots, they know the marching orders come from above and they will do their best to represent that position zealously to keep their jobs and get promotions. Representing people whose ideas you disagree with or advancing goals you find misguided is part of the job for a certain type of lawyer, usually the best type of lawyer and the one you want on your side.

A McCain DoJ packed with well qualified lesbian ACLU members in the career slots who understand they represent the client and not themselves will advance his agenda better than a DoJ packed with unqualified but perfectly vetted conservatives, just as an Obama DoJ would be better staffed by qualified Federalist Society fanatics in the career positions who understand the drill and push Administration policy as hard as they can despite misgivings.

Aplomb (b6fba6) — 7/29/2008 @ 10:05 pm

I know WLS has more first-hand knowledge, and I appreciate his critique of what happened. But I view it as even worse; I’m with Ed.

This wasn’t just ham-handed; it was extreme. Plus, it’s not the same as the 93 USA’s; those can be political appointments, right? The jobs we’re talking about here were not managerial.

Look, I’m a Republican. I view Republican politicians as generally better on crime issues. But there are plenty of Democrats in my office, and they are (by and large) good folks. If you were to take a random Republican and random Democrat out of any DA’s office, I’d guess their justice pursuit would be tough to guess by political party.

I have a friend who is a fairly liberal Democrat who is an AUSA, and I have little doubt he’s good at what he does. It shouldn’t be about pro-choice. It should be about competence. Or, better yet, excellence.

–JRM

JRM (355c21) — 7/29/2008 @ 11:05 pm

Does that mean the next president (no matter who) cannot fire and hire at the DOJ anymore? Or maybe no where in the government? You are stuck with what you get. I’ll hide and watch that circus.

Scrapiron (d671ab) — 7/29/2008 @ 11:45 pm

My point about the 93 US Attorneys is that they do hire the lawyers in their own offices. Each US Attorney staffs his own office, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out whether the applicant for an open position shares your political views or not. Goodling was simply an idiot.

And the degree of Goodling’s actual influence is overstated to some degree. Her ability to influence AUSA hires, for instance, was limited to circumstances where there was no Presidentially appointed US Attorney — in other words the US Attorney for the district had resigned, and a new Presidential appointee had not yet been named or confirmed.

Where there is an interim or acting US Attorney in charge of an office, all hiring decisions are made in DC so as to prevent the acting/interim from staffing the office with friends during his/her short tenure. Goodling filled that function when she was at EOUSA (Executive Office of US Attorneys). In my experience, she might have had input on a few dozen such hires a year – out of about 4000 slots nationwide.

Same for the Litigating Sections at DOJ. While a member of the AGs staff, she had influence on the hiring of career Trial Attorney slots only in sections where there was an Acting Assistant Attorney General. Again, we’re not talking about a huge number of people on an annual basis.

wls (124833) — 7/30/2008 @ 1:38 am

Any Democrat trying to say that this is a first for the country is a liar. Look at the Clinton and Carter DOJs, and WHCouncil’s offices.

PCD (5c49b0) — 7/30/2008 @ 5:28 am

Ruth Bader Ginsberg

I rest my case

EricPWJohnson (8518cf) — 7/30/2008 @ 7:41 am

PCD and WLS, you may or may not be right but so what? Tu quoque is not a valid defense. If Monica Goodling’s predecessors (and presumably, her successors) are just as corrupt as she is only less ham-handed, then it just means we’ll have to be that much more vigilant with the next Monica Goodling.

Xrlq (b71926) — 7/30/2008 @ 7:54 am

Rule of Thumb…
Don’t hire anyone with the name Monica!

Another Drew (8018ee) — 7/30/2008 @ 9:17 am

I’ll ask my friend, who, circa 1990, would call himself “the only conservative in the Civil Rights Division” — that is, until he was forced out by his very non-political career superiors for bringing a reverse-discrimination case that the offending jurisdiction settled with alacrity once the SCT was going to hear the case.

Attila (Pillage Idiot) (88e3e3) — 7/30/2008 @ 9:32 am

I should add, for the record, that of course it’s illegal to do what these morons working for Gonzales did.

But it’s also true that there are places in the government where hiring of career staff is de facto partisan without being so ham-handed as to violate the law. Same bad result, no illegality.

Attila (Pillage Idiot) (88e3e3) — 7/30/2008 @ 9:52 am

7/29/2008

More Evidence of Politicization in Hiring at DoJ

12 Responses to “More Evidence of Politicization in Hiring at DoJ”

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