Novak: Bush Is Alone On Gonzales

There is virtually no support on Capitol Hill for the president's wish to save Alberto Gonzales, who is even more disliked than Rumsfeld was, Robert Novak wrote today. "In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress.  Not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment."

While the dispute over the U.S. attorneys draws attention away from an unpopular war, the feeling in the cloakroom is that the way it was handled was incompetent--the same word used to describe the Bush administration generally. "We always have claimed that we were the party of better management," one House leader told me. "How can we claim that anymore?" (More Bush administration stories.)