An abysmal performance.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spent more than five tortuous hours on Capitol Hill on Thursday trying to salvage his job and reputation in the wake of the firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Gonzales failed on the second count, and may have failed on the first.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., called Gonzales' appearance a "reconfirmation hearing." That was a generous assessment. The attorney general's chronic evasiveness, stonewalling of Congress and misrepresentations about his role - and that of the Bush administration - in the firings had already prompted many Republicans to call for Gonzales' resignation before he uttered his first unconvincing words at Thursday's hearing.

Gonzales' testimony did nothing to help his cause and much to hurt it. He failed to satisfactorily answer any of the Senate Judiciary Committee's central questions: How did the Justice Department pick the eight prosecutors who were ousted? Why were the attorneys fired? To what degree was this political purge directed by the White House? Why did he initially provide false accounts - accounts that have been thoroughly contradicted by the sworn testimony of aides and Justice Department documents of the reasons for the firings and his role in them?

Gonzales pleaded a faulty memory a mind-numbing 71 times when committee members asked him questions. Given his inept and contradictory responses to the questions that he did answer, he would have been better off using his Etch-A-Sketch strategy on every query.

Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., reminded Gonzales about his March newspaper column in which he declared that the U.S. attorneys had "lost my confidence." Asked when he specifically had lost confidence in former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico, Gonzales responded: "Mr. Iglesias lost the confidence of Senator Domenici, as I recall, in the fall of 2005."

It was an evasive - and revealing - response. It's now known that Domenici, a Republican senator from New Mexico, called Iglesias before last November's election to ask about a criminal investigation involving a Democratic politician. When Iglesias informed him there would be no indictment before the election, Dominici hung up and later called Gonzales and other administration officials complaining about Iglesias.

Gonzales testified that he was firmly in control of the Justice Department. Yet he said he gave inexperienced aides near total freedom to make critical policy decisions, including which prosecutors should be dismissed. That doesn't jibe with the testimony of Gonzales' aides, who have said the attorney general was not only closely involved in compiling the list of prosecutors to be fired, but also in building cases against them.

At one point during Thursday's hearing, Gonzales said, "The moment I believe I can no longer be effective I will resign as attorney general." The mere fact that Gonzales believes that he's still effective - or refuses to acknowledge that he's not - makes it clear that moment has arrived.