Can we please stop fawning over Gonzales’ pretty made for TV movie now?

Testimony during a confirmation hearing did little to assuage doubts held by Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin regarding the ability of Alberto Gonzales to serve as U.S. attorney general.

Durbin, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee that grilled Gonzales for more than seven hours during the hearing, which is part of the process presidential cabinet nominees must endure to receive Senate confirmation.

“I like him personally very much,” Durbin said Friday afternoon. “His life story is very inspiring. He has worked hard and reached an extraordinarily high level of achievement.”

Durbin goes on to say that he doubts Gonzales’ judgment, but I’m wondering why he even has to bother with the compliments first. I heard over and over during the confirmation hearings this exact same bullshit line, “We really love you, you’re very pretty, but boy, do you suck as a lawyer.”

The Senate confirmation hearings are a job interview, and I don’t really care that much that Alberto Gonzales is a likeable dude who didn’t just sit around in the shit situaton in which he grew up. We’re not hiring Drinking Buddy In Chief here. We’re hiring a guy to do a job, and the only thing that’s relevent is that in every situation in which he had to give legal advice, he gave bad advice that put our soldiers in danger. Period.

The guy who lives downstairs from me has an inspiring life story, overcame crippling depression and alcoholism to get a good job in sales, owns a home, is kind to animals. I wouldn’t ask him to do open heart surgery because of it, though, and to feel that we somehow have to confirm Gonzales because his life used to suck is just the worst kind of pandering. Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.

A.