1 Boring Old Man

I’ve been thinking all afternoon about what bothered me about Monica Goodling’s testimony today. She struck me as a sincere person, someone who thought she was doing the right thing in some idiosyncratic frame of reference. I don’t think she thought of herself as a political operative, though I think it’s virtually impossible that she was so deeply involved in the "Attorney Replacement Plan" without knowing what it was about. I’m willing to accept that the monsterous things she was involved in do not mean that she is a monster. She seems terribly efficient and articulate – the kind of person I’d hire as an Administrative Assistant and be glad to have working for me.

There were two things that bothered me. The first is simple. She didn’t sound like a lawyer – at all. When she talked about her asking about political affiliations, or ruling out people with "liberal" leanings in their background, she used the phrase "stepped over the line." When she talked about her conversation with Gonzales, she "felt uncomfortable" and didn’t respond to him. She balked at either thing being "unlawful" or even "inappropriate." What did she mean, "Stepped over the line?" She was way on the other side of the next county, far beyond sight of the "line." What Monica Goodling did for a living was screen applicants for jobs at the DoJ to insure that they were loyal Republicans –  more than that, that they had no hint of "liberal" leanings. That’s not the way lawyers talk. Her whole job, her reason for being, was against the law for very obvious reasons, and she didn’t seem to really understand that. Monica Goodling was a political operative of the first kind – analogous to a Nazi Bureaucrat making sure no one with Jewish or Gipsy traits got into the Reich’s heirarchy, and she doesn’t seem to have known that’s what she was. The LAW wasn’t a part of what she said, at least not the LAW of the land. Even ambulance chasers know the LAW.

The second thing is harder to explain. Monica Goodling talked as though what she was doing was a good thing, the right thing. Somehow, when she was distraught in Margoles’ office saying, "all I wanted to do was serve this President, this Administration, this Department," she was serious. Hers was a morality of service for a higher cause, and, of course, making sure that the hirees were good Republicans [good Christians] and not "liberal" [Satan’s Spawn] was serving her President/Administration/Department [the Lord]. That is an absolutely amazing mentality – a Hitler’s Youth mentality, a Red Guard mentality. Monica Goodling appeared to me to be a brain-washed person – the American counterpart to the Islamic Jihadist suicide bomber.

This obviously competent woman went to Pat Robertson’s Law School and came out with none of the natural carriage of her profession, brain-washed with a holy mission that is in direct opposition to the basic tenets of the government she served and its Constitution. The Administration’s agenda, and the agenda of her particular religious affiliations was a higher power than the LAWs of our country.

Her naivity and seeming innocence was more damning than had she been an Ann Coulter or a Jack Abramoff. I doubt she has any idea what a tragic figure she has allowed herself to become. When confronted with something, she often responded, "I didn’t mean to," like a little girl who had spilled milk on her new dress – still not seeming to realize the gravity of her misdeed.