November 16, 2010
AS IF IT WEREN'T ENOUGH THAT THEY WERE KEEPING PELOSI AND REID...:
Hope. Change. Reality.: Attorney General Eric Holder entered the Justice Department on a mission to reinvent it. He'd rectify the dubious hires of the Bush era; he'd shut down Guantánamo and try the most notorious detainees here on U.S. soil; he'd speak forcefully and often about the return of the rule of law. Unfortunately, Washington doesn't like an idealist (Wil S. Hylton, December 2010, GQ)
Since his appointment in February 2009, Holder has become a vanguard for the administration's progressive wing. He has promised to end the policy of indefinite detention at Guantánamo by prosecuting some of its most notorious detainees; to investigate torture by the CIA; and to revitalize the department's most neglected offices, like the long-suffering Civil Rights Division. He has even tried to extend his influence beyond the DOJ, declaring his opposition to the death penalty and gun rights despite a constitutional obligation to enforce both.Naturally, all of this has made Holder a favorite target of the right, and in the buildup to this month's election, the attorney general became a wedge issue unto himself, with his name plastered on Tea Party posters, newspaper ads, and television commercials. Yet Republicans may be the least of Holder's problems. Even as he has rankled the right, he has also alienated many of his allies in the administration—and none more visibly than Emanuel, whose relentless deal-making has clashed with Holder's principles time and again.
Of course, the job of any attorney general straddles a unique and tipsy political fulcrum: On the one hand, he is a member of the president's team, expected to share his political goals. On the other, he is the nation's top cop, required by oath to leave politics at the door. The balance between these can be difficult to strike, and the surest sign of an independent AG is often the irritated White House six blocks away. Still, Holder is a special case. Inside Obama's West Wing, Emanuel's hostility toward Holder has become so pitched at times that the president has had to intervene. "Occasionally, Rahm would cross the line about Eric," says a source with access to White House deliberations, "and the president would tell him, 'Rahm, knock it off.' " Inside Holder's circle of advisers, the frustration with Emanuel has been equally palpable. When I asked the attorney general's closest friend, Steve Sims, a man Holder describes as his "consigliere," about the political pressure emanating from Emanuel's office, Sims, who had been relaxing on the sofa of his Chevy Chase home, jumped from his seat and shouted, "They need to shut the fuck up and let him do his job! He is not a political animal!" And when I asked Holder's brother, Billy, about Emanuel, he sighed deeply and shook his head. "Man, that guy…" he sputtered. "That guy's an animal. He's a beast."
Now that Emanuel has stepped down, the mood among Holder loyalists is triumphal. Former White House counsel Greg Craig, an ally of Holder's on several key issues, was recently heard on an open microphone predicting, "If Rahm goes, Eric survived," and in my own conversations with congressional, White House, and DOJ sources, I heard the same prognosis at least a dozen times.
...just imagine the damage a liberated General Holder would do?
