The problem for Gonzales was that his gratitude was both profound and paramount. For in his 30 disastrous months as the nation's top law enforcement officer, Gonzales was never able to separate his personal loyalty to Bush from his duty to the rest of the country to strictly, and independently, uphold the law.

Indeed, more than any other single factor, it was his willingness to play the toady to Bush's every political or policy whim that utterly compromised Gonzales in the eyes of Congress, which couldn't get a straight answer from him on any matter that might reflect badly on his benefactor.

Gonzales' belated departure, cynically and falsely cast by the president as the result of a partisan Democratic witch hunt, came about because, finally, too many Americans, in Congress and out, no longer believed him. And for that, he has no one to blame but himself and the man who, as Texas governor, hired him as his general counsel in 1995, named him Texas secretary of state in 1997, appointed him to the Texas Supreme Court in 1999 and made him White House general counsel in 2001.

Clearly, Gonzales owed Bush a heap of gratitude, and the currency of repayment was absolute fealty. In 2002, as Bush's lawyer, Gonzales gave the president a memo that claimed the chief executive had a legal right to ignore national and international strictures against torturing prisoners. Everyone in the world now knows what that led to at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and many other places.

As attorney general, Gonzales told a Senate subcommittee that there had not been a single "verified case of civil liberties abuse" when, it was proven this year in an audit of the FBI, there had been several instances of illegally obtained personal information on American citizens. He also told Congress that Bush's "war on terror" gave him a legal right to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant. In short, Gonzales seemed to believe that presidential power had no limits.

But it was Gonzales' vague, misleading, evasive, contradictory and untruthful testimony about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys that finally illustrated for all the extent to which he would prevaricate to shield the White House.

It is not a small part of Gonzales' disgrace that the nation's first Hispanic attorney general so thoroughly besmirched that noteworthy distinction.