Washington insiders

The names being kicked around as possible replacements for AG AG vary from the quasi-acceptable to the shiver-inducing, and from people who've been in and around Washington for years, to Washington neophytes. And for what it's worth, I think David Brooks' bigger point in hashing out just what should happen next is actually pretty good:

Anti-establishment sentiment once had merit, but it has reached the point of absurdity, and Alberto Gonzales represented many of its failings. He lacked the experience, the professional stature and the insider knowledge required of a good attorney general. He was part of an administration that was unthinkingly hostile to elite opinion, even when the elites were making sense..

That term--Washington insider--has been overused to such an extent that it's begun to lose all meaning. It's an umbrella term for about three or four "things" people don't like about Washington, none of which really has anything to do with the others. Some people say "Washington insider" in lieu of something more like "corrupt politician guy". Others say "Washington insider" when they mean "out of touch elitist". Yet more use the term to describe mythical horse-race obsessed creatures who, they imagine, spend a lot of time at cocktail parties. Every species of "insider" in the genus has its problems--some worse than others--but the backlash can, and at times has, resulted in the promotion of incompetent or corrupt outsiders whose only, shared virtue is that they come from somewhere else.

At the same time, it would be deeply misguided to believe that the problem with Alberto Gonzales was his outsider-ness. Alberto Gonzales was a dim-witted liar and a crony. His unscrupulousness in many ways called to mind Dick Cheney--a Washington insider for the ages--and his clumsiness at the helm of the Justice Department resembled that of another Washington insider, Bill Frist, who was one of the lamest Senate Majority Leaders in the history of the office. There are plenty of explanations for Gonzales' self-immolation, but being from Texas had almost nothing to do with it.

Which is all to say that this juxtaposition--the insider vs. the outsider--leaves us with a false choice. What we really want are smart, competent, ethical people running major bureaucracies like the Justice Department. Washington may be an arcane place, but it can be learned quickly by a shrewd outsider. So whereas both Patrick Fitzgerald (outsider) and Arlen Specter (insider) would make fine Republican Attorneys General, John Yoo (outsider) and David Addington (insider) would be total disasters.

Of course, George Bush is still president, so I'll be putting my money for now on "total disaster" whether the nominee is a beltway type or not.