Talking to Americans

Even to an outsider to American standards of the administration of justice, the blase duplicity of the Gonzales’ Chief of Staff’s “Griffin” emails, and the patent cynicism of the firings that they project is not just frightening, but terribly frightening. And the implications they do lie, as you more than rightly say, at its heart in whether “the criminal justice system will be turned into a partisan political tool.”And the firings, as much as the abuse of the prosecutorial appointments system they dramatically spotlighted is a horrible scandal.But also to an outsider, as certainly as exhilarating and as noble as vilifying these things – whether on their own or as part of the larger pernicion of American politico-“legocracy” – might be, isn’t the real remedy, to coin a phrase, right under your nose[s]? And isn’t it really structural, not political?The Bush administration was not – as I understand it – the first to treat the offices of US Attorney system as a kind of political swag bag. Clinton and Reno are said to have used the power of appointment, perhaps not quite so cynically, but certainly as sweepingly, as an instrument at least of political power – whether or not there might be evidence elsewhere of its use for political reward. Politics being what politics is, one suspects its use for political ends, perhaps not quite so spectacular as in this case, extends back to the time of the invention of the office.So surely, the answer must be, to de-politicize the office itself. So, at the same time this conduct is condemned as roundly and persistently and as loudly as anyone, the real answer has to be to transform these offices which are not only seen to be, but which also structurally are, independent, authoritative executors of justice.Other countries with an English legal base characteristically use a model fashioned on the UK’s, “Director of Public Prosecutions” model. Under that system, prosecutors operate independently of political direction, and appointment, except in the broadest sense. They are accountable to the Director and through the Director to the relevant constitutional authority – the legislature – and by day-in day-out measures, they repeatedly operate successfully. As these current shudders run through the US political-legocracy, by all means, scandalize and condemn. Try to raise the political cost of the abuses and make sure they can’t happen again.But you folks are the ones who invented the operating political ideals of checks and balances, the value of separation and oversight.Isn’t it time you put them in place in the federal prosecutorial system? And they really are, right under your nose.