"I feel very confident that that information should be sufficient for the members of the Senate to make an informed decision about John Roberts' qualifications"
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Confidence is doing a lot of work here. Alberto Gonzales isn’t testifying so much as performing reassurance: the calm, administrative tone of a lawyer-politician signaling that the process has been fed and the machine should now run. The sentence is built like a compliance checklist. “I feel” softens responsibility; “very confident” projects authority without adding facts; “should be sufficient” quietly lowers the bar from full candor to minimal adequacy. Even the doubled “that that” reads like bureaucratic stutter, the kind that happens when you’re trying to land on phrasing that can’t be easily pinned down later.
The intent is procedural closure. Gonzales frames the Senate’s role as decision-making based on provided materials, not as an aggressive search for what hasn’t been provided. “Information” stays conspicuously generic, avoiding the messy question of what’s missing, contested, or classified. He’s also laundering responsibility: the Senate will make an “informed decision,” so any controversy becomes a matter of their judgment, not the administration’s disclosure.
The context is a confirmation fight in a post-9/11 Washington where executive power, legal memos, and judicial philosophy were under unusual scrutiny. John Roberts was poised to become a consequential vote on the Court, and Gonzales, as a high-level administration legal voice, had incentive to keep the spotlight on credentials rather than on internal deliberations. The subtext is an invitation to accept a curated record as complete enough. It’s not about transparency; it’s about sufficiency, the politics of giving just enough to move history along.
The intent is procedural closure. Gonzales frames the Senate’s role as decision-making based on provided materials, not as an aggressive search for what hasn’t been provided. “Information” stays conspicuously generic, avoiding the messy question of what’s missing, contested, or classified. He’s also laundering responsibility: the Senate will make an “informed decision,” so any controversy becomes a matter of their judgment, not the administration’s disclosure.
The context is a confirmation fight in a post-9/11 Washington where executive power, legal memos, and judicial philosophy were under unusual scrutiny. John Roberts was poised to become a consequential vote on the Court, and Gonzales, as a high-level administration legal voice, had incentive to keep the spotlight on credentials rather than on internal deliberations. The subtext is an invitation to accept a curated record as complete enough. It’s not about transparency; it’s about sufficiency, the politics of giving just enough to move history along.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
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