Congress Should Avoid Loyal Friends as AG

Alberto Gonzales is in the hot seat. He is under investigation for perjury and abuse of power. There is strong evidence to suggest that Gonzales used his official power to advance the cause of the Republican Party in the 2006 midterm elections. As I recently wrote in The Politico , Gonzales is not the first attorney general to find himself in trouble. There is a long history of attorneys general who became polarizing figures.

This tension emerges because the position of attorney general represents two very different constituencies: the president and the public.

As a Cabinet member, the attorney general faces immense pressure to consider the needs of the administration, many of which are political. Meanwhile, as the nation's chief law enforcement officer and head of the Justice Department, the attorney general has the responsibility to make sure that the nation's laws are enforced.

Theoretically, the attorney general should focus entirely on the public. But this has rarely been the case. The historical record shows that far too many attorneys general have been unable to resist political incentives.

Some of the attorneys general who had the greatest problems had been the president's close friend or advisor before their appointment. So it should not be a surprise that Gonzales might have succumbed to political pressure from the White House.

For Gonzales and Bush have a long history. Gonzales, who President Bush calls "mi abogado," worked in George W. Bush's gubernatorial administration in Texas, serving as a top advisor, an elections officer and as the representative on immigration issues. In 1996, there is strong evidence that Gonzales helped Bush avoid jury duty on a drunk-driving case that could have revealed the governor's own arrest for drunk driving in 1976. Gonzales served as Texas's secretary of state, from December 1997 to January 1999. Bush then appointed Gonzales to the Texas Supreme Court, despite minimal judicial experience.

After coming to Washington as White House counsel in 2001, Gonzales proved extremely loyal to President Bush. He staunchly defended presidential power after 9/11, rejecting claims that Congress had the right to exert significant influence on executive decisions.

Gonzales and Bush also remained close personally, and Gonzales was devoted to advancing Bush's success. As Bill Minutaglio, Gonzales's biographer, wrote, "Gonzales was bound to Bush for the rest of his public life. And when Bush decided -- for political or for more enlightened reasons -- to advance some minorities, Gonzales was one of his most prominent and important choices."

Congress should have been more cautious when Gonzales was appointed, given that personal loyalty to the president has been a core problem with many of the nation's most controversial attorneys general, including two of the worst: Harry Daugherty and John Mitchell.

Daugherty was attorney general for Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923 and under President Calvin Coolidge until 1924. Daugherty did not have the resume to fill that position. Observers were extremely critical when Harding appointed him. Many thought him unqualified, given that Daugherty had a record of corruption in Ohio politics and little legal experience.

But Daugherty had secured the appointment primarily because he managed Harding's pre-convention campaign and helped him win the Republican nomination in 1920. According to The New York Times, President Harding "has been content to choose merely a best friend" for this important position. They added, "if the impartial opinion of the Ohio bar had been sought, it would surely have been that Mr. Daugherty was not qualified, by either knowledge or experience, to be Attorney General."

Opponents especially disliked Daugherty because he staffed the Department of Justice based on politics rather than competence. Moreover, he refused to take action against administration members involved in the Teapot Dome scandal.

Another classic example of a presidential ally who grossly misused the power of the position was Richard M. Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell. Nixon and Mitchell met in 1967, when both were partners at a New York law firm. Mitchell went on to manage Nixon's presidential campaign in 1968. As a reward, Mitchell was appointed attorney general.

From the start, Mitchell ran the Justice Department in roughshod manner. He refused to enforce policies, like civil rights, that the administration did not support. He also used his authority to advance the administration's cause by intimidating and harassing opponents. In July, 1969, for example, Mitchell authorized a wiretap on Nixon's own deputy counsel, John Sears, because he and the president feared damaging conversations with reporters.

In 1972, Mitchell resigned from the Justice Department to direct the Committee to Re-Elect the President. On the road to Watergate, he applied to CREEP all the skills he had honed as attorney general. As a result of Watergate, Mitchell is the only attorney general in U.S. history to be sent to prison.

Even close confidantes who were far more effective attorneys general than either Daugherty or Mitchell often proved too willing to go to extremes to help the president. President John F. Kennedy's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, spearheading many worthwhile programs while serving as attorney general -- including his push for stronger civil rights. Yet Kennedy was willing to authorize the Federal Bureau of Investigation to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr.

In the future, the Senate must be tougher during the confirmation hearings of the attorney general. As the nation's chief law enforcement officer, the position is far too important to be left in the hands of presidential friends and family.

Though the office will always be political -- and frequently controversial -- Congress can insist on appointees who have the greatest chance to resist the temptation of turning the job of U.S. attorney general into a purely political post.

Julian E. Zelizer is Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He is writing a history of the politics of national security which will be published by Yale University Press. Next year Harvard University Press will publish a book that he co-edited, Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s. He is also the author of On Capitol Hill and the editor of The American Congress.