Something is missing from this editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post. See if you can spot what the something is (emphasis added):

The episode involved a 2004 nighttime visit to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff. Only the broadest outlines of this visit were previously known: that Mr. Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Mr. Ashcroft’s illness, had refused to recertify the legality of the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program; that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card had tried to do an end-run around Mr. Comey; that Mr. Ashcroft had rebuffed them. …

… That Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll may be most disturbing of all.

What’s missing? Here’s a hint …

The missing element is not entirely unmentioned in the editorial. But WaPo does give one the impression that this element was just a bit player in the episode.

Likewise, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel blames Gonzales for attempting a end run around Mr. Comey, not to mention the Constitution. Laurie Kellman of the Associated Press reports,

Citing dramatic testimony a day earlier that revealed that Gonzales, then the White House legal counsel, tried to undermine the department he now leads, Hagel demanded the attorney general’s resignation.

“The American people deserve an attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of our country, whose honesty and capability are beyond question,” Hagel, R-Neb., said in a statement. “Attorney General Gonzales can no longer meet this standard. He has failed this country. He has lost the moral authority to lead.”

But later in the same article Kellman writes,

President Bush continued to stand by his longtime friend and adviser. Asked about Hagel’s comment on Gonzales’ moral authority, press secretary Tony Snow replied: “We disagree, and the president supports the attorney general.”

Your darn tootin’ he is. As long as he stays in his job, Gonzo will continue to disgrace himself in front of Congress and the nation. And he will do it cheerfully. He’ll do whatever it takes to protect the Invisible Man.

Does anyone in Washington, including Chuck Hagel, really believe Gonzales was not acting under orders? That the night visit to John Ashcroft’s hospital room was entirely his idea? Or Andy Card’s? Please. Let’s see how this sounds, Chuck —

The American people deserve an attorney general a president, the chief law enforcement officer executive of our country, whose honesty and capability are beyond question. Attorney General Gonzales President Bush can no longer meet does not meet this standard. He has failed this country. He has lost the moral authority to lead.

Now, is that so hard?

But President Bush is never the one in charge when anything bad happens, you know. He’s only in charge when there’s some glory in it. Or, at least, he is credited with being in charge. For example, on September 11, after finally breaking himself away from The Pet Goat, the President and his entourage boarded Air Force One to go … somewhere. As the crisis unfolded, and NORAD and the airlines and the FAA flapped about like headless chickens, and as mid-level managers made decisions because no one else was, Air Force One flew in circles over Florida while the President and the Vice President argued by phone over where the bleeping plane should land.

But because the entire nation managed not to dissolve into a puddle that day, President Bush coasted through the next four years wearing the mantle of Glorious Leader. He wore it until Katrina blew it off him. He thinks he’s still wearing it, I suspect.

This pattern continues. When he can appear before a backdrop of cheering men and women in uniform, he is the resolute and all-powerful Commander in Chief. Hard choices to make in Iraq? Um, go talk to the generals on the ground about that.

Although there are exceptions, too much of the “mainstream media” and politicians in Washington — including Democrats — are pointing fingers at Alberto Gonzales. But the truth of the matter is that’s Gonzo’s job. He’s there to deflect the blame, to play the fool, to stonewall — whatever it takes to keep those fingers from pointing at Bush.

Sidney Blumenthal writes in Salon,

Loyalty has always been the alpha and omega of George W. Bush’s presidency. But all the forms of allegiance that have bound together his administration — political, ideological and personal — are being shredded, leaving only blind loyalty. Bush has surrounded himself with loyalists, who fervently pledged their fealty, enforced the loyalty of others and sought to make loyal converts. Now Bush’s long downfall is descending into a series of revenge tragedies in which the characters are helpless against the furies of their misplaced loyalties and betrayals. The stage is being strewn with hacked corpses — on Monday, former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; imminently, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz; tomorrow, whoever remains trapped on the ghost ship of state. As the individual tragedies unfold, Bush’s royal robes unravel.

I think the boy king has been buck naked for some time, but let’s go on …

Loyalty to Bush is the ultimate royal principle of the imperial presidency. The ruler must be unquestioned and those around him unquestioning. Allegiance to Bush’s idea of himself as the “war president,” “the decider” and “the commander guy” is paramount. But the notion that the ruler is loyal to those loyal to him is no longer necessarily true. While he must be beheld as the absolute incarnation of kingly virtue, his sense of obligation to those paying homage has become perilously relative.

Those who feel compelled to tell the truth rather than stick to the cover story are cast in the dust, like McNulty. Those Bush defends as an extension of his authority but who become too expensive become expendable, like Wolfowitz. And those who exist solely as Bush’s creations and whose survival is crucial to his own are shielded, like Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

In other words, as long as the nation is yakking about what Alberto Gonzales did, and not about what Bush did, Gonzo’s got a job.

Blumenthal suggests that this episode has a lot to do with why John Ashcroft didn’t stay in the Attorney General position after Bush’s “re-election,” leaving the position open to be filled by the purest of Bush flunkies. I suspect he’s right about that.

For a similar perspective, check out what Howard Fineman said on Tuesday night’s “Coundtown..” If you want to skip the background, Howard’s bit starts at about about 3:50.

Bush is famous for his “loyalty,” but if you pay close attention, you see that Bush is “loyal” only as far as it suits him. When it comes to saving his own political hide, just about everyone (but him) is expendable. But at the rate he’s going, Bush is going to run out of flunkies before there’s a shortage of buses to throw them under.

I didn’t watch the Republican candidate debate last night, and it wasn’t on my mind this morning until I ran into this headline on the McClatchy Newspaper Washington Bureau site …

… after which I was seized with a terror that I was stuck in some kind of time-loop anomaly and was reliving 1999. And also 1994, and 1980, and no doubt 1924. And some other years.

But no, I am still in the common time continuum. It’s the Republican Party that’s stuck in a time-loop anomaly.

Several rightie bloggers today are hooting that Ron Paul, darling of the antiwar libertarians, blew his candidacy by blaming the U.S. for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I haven’t found a transcript of the debate; if someone else runs across one, please post the link in the comments. However, I believe I got some clues about what Ron Paul said from Byron York’s account —

For a man who had just grabbed the spotlight in a nationally televised presidential debate, Ron Paul seemed a little, well, defensive. A few minutes after the debate ended here at the University of South Carolina, Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas, ventured into the Spin Room to talk to reporters, only to find that they wanted to know whether he really blamed the United States for the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“Who did that?” Paul snapped. “Who blamed America?”

“Well, your critics felt that you did.”

“No, I blamed bad policy over 50 years that leads to anti-Americanism,” Paul said. “That’s little bit different from saying ‘blame America.’ Don’t put those words in my mouth.”

“But the policies were bad American policies?”

“We’ve had an interventionist foreign policy for 50 years that has come back to haunt us,” Paul continued. “So that’s not ‘Blame America’ — that’s demagoguing, distorting issues…That’s deceitful to say those kinds of things.”

Ah, I see. Ron Paul tripped over one of the biggest sacred cows in the GOP corral, which is that one must never, ever attempt to understand how terrorists think. It’s a bugaboo of the conservative brain that to admit the 9/11 terrorists have any reasons at all — including unjust and unfair reasons — for committing the 9/11 attacks, this amounts to “blaming America.” The rightie pure of heart must remain willfully ignorant of what motivates terrorists. Terrorists in Rightie World are allowed to have only the irrational, unconscious motivations of beasts — they hate us for our freedoms.

For example, people who understand these things say that Osama bin Laden’s original motivation for organizing al Qaeda was the deployment of U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. Acknowledging this is not “blaming America.” We can argue, factually, that we deployed troops to Saudi Arabia with Saudi permission to free Kuwait from Iraqi control. And you can rightfully say that Osama bin Laden objected to infidel troops in the land of the Prophet because he is a religious whackjob. But as soon as anyone starts to talk about why Osama bin Laden organized al Qaeda, righties cover their ears and screech about “blaming America.”

John Nichols of The Nation provides us with a little more information on what Ron Paul actually said:

Asked about his opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Paul repeated his oft-expressed concern that instead of making the U.S. safer, U.S. interventions in the Middle East over the years have stirred up anti-American sentiment. As he did in the previous Republican debate, the Texan suggested that former President Ronald Reagan’s decisions to withdraw U.S. troops from the region in the 198Os were wiser than the moves by successive Republican and Democratic presidents to increase U.S. military involvement there.

Speaking of extremists who target the U.S, Paul said, “They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East [for years]. I think (Ronald) Reagan was right. We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. Right now, we’re building an embassy in Iraq that is bigger than the Vatican. We’re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting.”

Paul argued that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are “delighted that we’re over there” in Iraq, pointing out that, “They have already… killed 3,400 of our men and I don’t think it was necessary.”

Here’s why I’m glad I didn’t watch the debate:

Giuliani, going for an applause line with a conservative South Carolina audience that was not exactly sympathetic with his support for abortion rights and other socially liberal positions, leapt on Paul’s remarks. Interrupting the flow of the debate, Giuliani declared, “That’s really an extraordinary statement. That’s really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I have ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11. I would ask the congressman withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that.”

I believe I would not have kept my supper down after that. As mayor of New York City, Giuliani often was an insufferable prick. But since 9/11 he has expanded insufferable prickitude to Godzilla proportions.

But again, to admit to past foreign policy mistakes — Reagan’s sending Marines into Lebanon with no clear idea of what was going on there and what the Marines were supposed to do about it is a good example — is not to say that the United States “invited” the terrorist attacks, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the attacks were somehow justified.

What this shows us is why righties cannot learn from mistakes. And it shows us the mindset of people who, after more than four years of blundering, refuse even to reconsider the Iraq War.

Last year I wrote,

Righties are so terrified of the ghost of Neville Chamberlain they seem to think that even trying to understand what the enemy wants amounts to “appeasement.” Thus the vacuous nonsense about “they hate us for our freedoms.” But understanding what the enemy wants isn’t just about negotiation or appeasement, but understanding who the enemy is. This is vital when the enemy is a stateless faction, because what they want is what defines them. It’s what sets them apart from other people who might live in same region and share the same ethnic and religious heritage, but who are not necessarily our enemies. If we don’t understand clearly who, precisely, we are fighting, how can we develop effective tactics and strategies? How can we efficiently direct our resources to strike the people we most need to strike?

And the answer is, of course, that we can’t. We fight terrorism in a fog of ignorance, and blindly squander resources and lives. Under George W. Bush’s “leadership” al Qaeda has gone from being a relatively small, albeit well-funded, pack of fringe radical misfits to being the heroes of the Muslim world. Heck of a job, folks.

For another view of the debate, here’s Andrew Sullivan:

The Republicans, we learned, have absolutely no idea what to do about Iraq. The only two people with coherent positions were McCain and Paul. McCain supports a war without end, a permanent occupation of Iraq, regardless of whether a national government there can exist in the foreseeable future. He’s for empire, as are Cheney and Bush. I can see no reason for him to withdraw any troops in the next five years. The notion that a national Iraqi government, composed of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, will be able to defend itself and take the side of the West in the war in Jihadist terror is simply ludicrous in the imaginable future. That much we surely know by now. So empire is the new Republican consensus: an empire built entirely for security reasons, and an empire which somehow manages to make us less secure. Paul, in contrast, had the balls to state the classic Republican position, and to defend it in the wake of 9/11. Man, that guy has some brass cojones. He even invoked Ronald Reagan in urging withdrawal from the irrationality of Arab politics. Other than McCain and Paul, the others were risible in their soundbites and faux toughness.

Logan Murphy writes at Crooks and Liars that Fox News is attacking Ron Paul. Expect the Republican powers that be to mercilessly deride Rep. Paul as a flake and possibly even a liberal. But Paul may represent the only viable possible future for the Republican Party. Last night’s event may have been less of a debate than it was a mass stampede over a cliff.

See also: Taylor Marsh.

Update: See also Digby.