For those of us who like President Bush, one of the things that we like is his steadfastness. He doesn’t back down. He fights. We often see this characteristic when the president shows what has become one of his trademarks – his often shocking loyalty to the people who serve him.

Before W. came to town, we had accustomed ourselves to administrations that eagerly threw underperforming functionaries under the bus. Past administrations offered the heads of even Cabinet level officials simply to appease a hungry media or opposition party. Sometimes, performance had nothing to do with it.

With President Bush, also, performance often has nothing to do with it. But in our present context, I don’t intend that as a compliment. Alberto Gonzales has proven himself inept as Attorney General. He has served his president poorly. If performance were a Bush administration preoccupation, Alberto Gonzales would not be Attorney General today.

The firing of the U.S. Attorneys shouldn’t have been a scandal. These individuals serve at the president’s pleasure. A president can fire them because he doesn’t like their taste in neckties. The fact that Gonzales’ maladroit ways have turned this into a scandal speaks eloquently to how dismally he carries out his responsibilities.

IN SITUATIONS LIKE THIS where the president stands by a faltering employee, his loyalty is a vice. What’s more, the president’s loyalty is misplaced. The president owes his loyalty first and foremost to his country. If and when it comes down to serving the country best or standing by his friends, he is morally obliged to put the country’s interests first.

As one of the president’ supporters and admirers, situations like the one with Gonzales drive me nuts. I’m serious – as I’m typing, I’m frothing at the mouth like a Daily Kos diarist or Keith Olberman when he delivers one of his “Special Comments.”

When the president was re-elected, he said at his press conference the next day that he had won some hard earned political capital. Indeed he had. More precisely, we had; his victory also belonged to his supporters and should have served the causes that we and the president held dear. Our biggest issue was and remains the war against radical Islam and the battle in Iraq.

And yet the president has spent his political capital, rather our political capital, on frivolous things. It started in 2005 when he nominated the woefully unqualified Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Some of his loyalists defended this selection, others of us broke ranks, but one thing that was clear at the time to all parties was that this particular fight was hardly worth taking on. Why did he have to spend political capital on Harriet Miers when Sam Alito and other more qualified jurists were available? Miers was a Bush loyalist and friend, and while loyalty is a swell thing, the Miers thing wounded the president’s reputation. That wound still hasn’t mended.

THE GONZALES SITUATION seems in some ways to be Miers redux. Yet again, a friend of the president’s has been handed a task that is beyond his abilities. Also yet again, the president is standing by that friend beyond the point of reason.

This week, Alberto Gonzales is going to go to Capitol Hill to try to save his job. Given the Keystone Kops-like antics of Gonzales and his ranking lackeys, he faces a tall order. Gonzales presided over not only a gang that couldn’t fire straight, but also a gang that couldn’t keep its story straight.

Here we are again - the administration is going to waste precious political capital trying to save Gonzo’s hide. Thank heavens we don’t have anything important going on. It’s not like we have a war that we have to win that’s under constant attack by a Democratic opposition that is eager to declare defeat at the earliest opportunity. In order to fend the Democrats off for long enough to give the Petraeus surge time to work, the Republicans will need to spend their political capital wisely.

I’ll be blunt – Alberto Gonzales isn’t worth it. Even if the thing with the U.S. Attorneys never happened, the administration should have been eager to replace Gonzales with a serious and competent Attorney General who can play a constructive role in the war on terror. If Gonzales won’t do the right thing and the president won’t do the right thing, then Congressional Republicans will be well within their rights to insist that Gonzales go and end this sad drama sooner rather than later.

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