As I predicted in an earlier entry, Alberto Gonzales has announced his resignation, to take place next month. Well, alright, as they say, the writing was on the wall for his imminent departure.

As I discussed in my entry about Karl Rove, I believe that Gonzales’ resignation is part of a plan by the administration to make themselves look better before next year’s elections. I can’t know this for certain, but it’s a hunch, and I think a good one. Gonzales is just as, if not more important than Rove to making things look peachy for the Republicans come a year from November. Rove is the behind-the-scenes guy, but his kinda-maybe-sort of-possible role in some of the scandals of this administration would surely come back to create trouble for the Republican candidate. Gonzales, on the other hand, is even more important because he’s as publically available as Rove is privately unreachable. Take whatever trouble a continued Rove tenure could cause and multiply it by 10. That’s a to-term’s-end story of Alberto Gonzales.

As I’ve said before, I think the hope is that with Rove and Gonzales gone, the investigations might be continuing, but without them on the public scene, the news media won’t pay as much attention. They can only report on this stuff for so long before it becomes boring. Then they switch to other things for a while, until something big happens. With them out of the way, the media might be more apt to ignore the whole thing, mostly, until the Presidential election is over. By then, it won’t matter, since we’ll (they hope) have a Republican President-elect, and maybe a Congress to boot.

I don’t know how well this idea can work, since I’m not a political expert. But, the fact is that fired U.S. Attorneys and a leaked CIA operative are just not as interesting as Lindsay or Paris going to jail, or serving time over in their local rehab center. Probably they hope that the American public will tune in to that instead.

So, Rove and Gonzales are gone. I know some left-wingers would probably like to see Condoleezza Rice go, too. However, the fact is that she just hasn’t been as scandal-prone as Rove and Gonzales. I think she’s pretty safe for the rest of her term. The same people would also probably like to see Michael Chertoff go, but I also think he’s safe. He may have screwed up during Katrina, but lets not forget “Heck of a Job Brownie” got the shove on that one.

And so, I guess, ends the major resignation run of the Bush administration. Perhaps some bit players will leave, but I don’t foresee any more major people leaving. But, we’ll see what happens.