But his failure to fight aggressively against some of those positions points up Gonzales' principal weakness, which is that he not likely to be a strong Attorney General, willing to stand up to the President and others within the Administration when it is required. Certainly nothing in his record as White House counsel suggests that he will have the independence necessary to preserve public faith in the nonpartisan nature of law enforcement. Rather, there is ground for fear that the Department - already highly politicized under Ashcroft - will become even more so because of Gonzales' close links to the White House. And there is also ground to fear that the White House will be able to have more influence over the course of sensitive political investigations than is appropriate.

A related issue is whether Gonzales, as an outsider coming from the White House, will be able to win the confidence of the career civil servants at the Department. Many of them have felt battered and isolated for the last four years. Ashcroft was surrounded by a group of highly political aides that was convinced that the civil servants were their enemy out to sabotage them. As a result many major decisions, ranging from gun control to terrorism, were made either without input from, or in the fact of input from, the career people at the Department. (That, in part, explains why many of those decisions were so bad - and I say that not only as a progressive but simply as a lawyer). Gonzales (unlike Larry Thompson, who in my mind would have been a superior choice) has no history at the Department, no reservoir of good will to draw upon. He will need quickly to demonstrate his independence from his former political bosses.