Alberto Gonzales

When I found out Alberto Gonzales was resigning yesterday, my first thought was, "why resign on a Monday?" As all good fans of The West Wing know, when you want to bury stories in the news cycle, you announce them on Friday. Reporters are more likely to go to home early on Fridays so things might not make it into Saturday's paper, the Sunday paper is planned way in advance, and the Sunday shows are booked way in advance, so not much will get said until Monday, at which point the news is stale.

So, strategically, when you must announce things that make you look bad, you should try to slip them in to Friday afternoon news conferences.

It makes the president look bad that Gonzales resigned. He probably knew he was going to resign by Friday. In fact, don't you think he probably knew he was going to resign weeks ago, when the US attorney scandal first broke? So why wait until Monday, when he would dominate coverage for much of the week?

I see two possibilities:
1. Bush thinks it doesn't make him look that bad. After all, everything he does is basically a major fuck-up. Maybe it actually makes him look good to clean out the cabinet of his cronies. like he's actually taking responsibility for his actions. to me, this is the less likely possibility. the more likely possibility is,
2. Bush was trying to bury something else in the news cycle. something that got announced on Friday, but was overshadowed by Gonzales's announcement on Monday. The only thing was, I couldn't think of what it could be.

Then, I read Bob Herbert's column in the NYT($) today, and I have a nomination.

For the past few weeks, Congress has been trying to expand funding for SCHIP (State Childrens Health Insurance Program). This is a program that gives health insurance to poor kids who wouldn't be covered otherwise. Pretty much everyone, democrat and republican, supports it because how can you explain being against sick, defenseless children to your constituents. Bush is basically the only person speaking out against it, and indeed, he's threatened to veto any congressional expansion of the program. But even for Mr Unpopularity, that would look pretty sucky, so what does he do instead? He waits until a Friday night when Congress is out of session to unilaterally impose draconian new restrictions on how states can administer the funds. No need to actually sign a veto, and just for extra protection, he announces the resignation of an unpopular figure the following Monday so no one will pay too much attention.

look at this quote from the Op-Ed.

“We had zero forewarning,” said New Jersey’s Jon Corzine. “It was sprung at 7:30 on a Friday night in the middle of August, the time when it would draw the least fire.”

or this one from yesterday's NYT editorial:

Late on a recent Friday while Congress was in recess, a time fit for hiding dark deeds, the administration sent a letter to state health officials spelling out new hurdles they would have to clear before they could insure children from middle-income families unable to find affordable health coverage.

Emphasis mine, but it looks like the NYT pretty much agrees with me.