A Terrible Liar

A Terrible Liar

Some people are blessed, or perhaps cursed, with the ability to lie, evade, and dissemble seamlessly. Alberto Gonzales in not one of them.

Once upon a time we had great liars—people who could dodge, parse and misdirect like verbal Houdinis. Harry Truman said of Richard Nixon that Nixon was a great liar because he practiced a lot and would rather tell a lie even when the truth would serve him better. Bill Clinton could parse a sentence or even the meaning of a gerundial phrase. “I am not having sex with her,” means precisely what it says. “Right now, as I speak to you, I am not having sex.” Man, he was good at being bad. There is a kind of perverse virtue in this.

Most of the time when we call someone a terrible liar, we actually mean that they are good at lying. Alberto Gonzales, however, is a terrible liar in every sense of the word. He lies a lot and is not very good at it. He doesn’t seem either credible or authoritative. He is unable to use verbal slight of hand to change the subject or answer the question he wants and not the one being asked. He just sits there, with that pathetic deer in the headlights look, and repeats painfully implausible set piece responses.

Some pundits have cruelly compared him to a piñata—as someone who just keeps getting hammered on. Some criticize the metaphor as being racist—comparing an Hispanic to a piñata because he is Hispanic. I don’t think the metaphor is racist, but it is inaccurate. It is an insult not to Hispanics but to piñatas.

He is no piñata—a piñata moves when it is hit. The stick drives it in different directions. It swings at varying speeds. It eludes those who are trying to beat it and break it.

Gonzales is no piñata; he’s a heavy bag—tied to one place, just absorbing the punches and never moving an inch. He is not evasive; nor is he cute and clever. He’s not feisty and doesn’t fight back. He can’t float like a butterfly or sting like a bee. He just looks straight ahead and puts his effort into trying not to look as if he were going to cry.

For pity’s sake, there should be a mercy rule. In Little League if a team is up by 11 runs they call the game—not wanting to humiliate the losers. In boxing they stop the fight if the other boxer can’t protect himself. This is a TKO. He is totally defenseless.

The Democrats aren’t hitting him as hard as the Republicans who are clearly embarrassed by his performance. Democrats want him up in front of some committee every week to make the Whitehouse look bad. Republicans would like him to go away and to begin repairing the Justice Department from this debacle.

It is fair to ask if this is more politicized than other Justice Departments. But there can be no serious question as to the total ineptitude of General Gonzales who is a general disaster. He makes one long for those halcyon days of John Mitchell or John Ashcroft—a time when Attorney Generals could move and dance, think on their feet and frustrate the opposition with brilliance and not appall them with stories that no self-respecting ten year-old would try. I’m expecting the “Dog ate my meeting notes” excuse next week. The cruelty here is not the Congress or Senate panels but the Whitehouse that leaves him in the ring to be pounded, pummeled and punished. Shame.