Next to go?

Knives are being sharpened for Bush’s Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House, told the Chicago Tribune, “I believe we need a new attorney general.”

I think it’s inevitable Gonzales will go, and one wonders if the whole Bush regime is starting to unravel. Perhaps that’s wishful thinking. It’s clear, however, that as Pelosi also told the Tribune, “They [the Bush administration] knew that the era of no oversight was over and that they would have to be held accountable.”

If the trend of forced resignations continues, sooner or later the administration will run out of fall guys and someone will start talking. Scooter Libby may be willing to go prison for his boss, but how many others will take loyalty that far?

After Libby was convicted, my friend Tim Drake in Chicago emailed me an interesting prediction:

Late this summer Dick Cheney will resign for “medical reasons.” Bush will then nominate Condi Rice to serve out Cheney's term (though not seek the nomination), making W’s legacy not the war, but the “visionary” who made it possible for the first woman, and first African-American, to become VP. All of this is being orchestrated by George H.W. and Cheney, not by W or Karl Rove—damn Hillary, one-up Dems on racial politics and deep-six Iraq as his sole legacy. Senate Democrats will have a nervous breakdown figuring out how to handle Condi’s confirmation hearings.

It’s an interesting scenario, but one I pretty much dismissed at the time. Cheney and his gang didn’t spend all that time, money and effort to install Bush as president just to hand power away. Still, Donald Rumsfeld, who was part of the ruling circle, quit when his position became untenable with a Democratic-controlled Congress. That same Congress will frustrate much of Cheney’s agenda.

Today, I read an AP story on the Chicago Tribune website saying that Cheney headed back to the hospital because of “discomfort in his left lower leg.” The article also listed all Cheney’s health complaints:

He had six hours of surgery on his legs in 2005 to repair a kind of aneurysm, a ballooning weak spot in an artery that can burst if left untreated. He has had four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, two artery-clearing angioplasties and an operation to implant a special pacemaker in his chest.

I read all this and I thought maybe Tim’s right after all. Cheney doesn’t have to actually be in office to be a puppet master, after all. Maybe he’ll leave rather than face any Congressional investigations, while retaining control from afar. But it’s just as likely that he’ll stay on until the bitter end, especially since Gonzales leaving will make it unlikely Cheney could leave this year, and there's not much point after that.

Still, if this administration really is starting to unravel then Gonzales may not be the only one to go. One can always hope.