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When Eric Holder resigned earlier this week, his scandal-ridden tenure as Attorney General came to a close, but the debate over his legacy has merely begun. While conservatives accused Holder of using the Justice Department to hassle political opponents, “Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd sees him in a different and rosier light, calling him “a very non-political person.”
“I think people used to mistakenly think that this guy was this long-time political operative who happened to be an attorney general. That’s not him at all,” Todd said on MSNBC. “The guy wasn’t political at all and in many ways, he’s just ended up being the point person to attract a lot of attacks.”
To listen to Todd, Holder repeatedly struggled with other figures in the Obama administration, such as former Senior Adviser David Axelrod and former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who accused him of failing to consider “the politics of an issue,” which may say more about the tone of the Obama administration than Holder personally.
This characterization of Holder is not shared by some of his conservative critics, however.
The Daily Caller noted that around the same time Todd was on the air making his remarks, National Review editor Jonah Goldberg described Holder as a “hatchet man” in an interview with FOX News host Jon Scott.
“He’s basically been a political fixer, a firewall for the president of the United States. A stonewaller. He serves much the way Bobby Kennedy did for JFK as a politicized attorney general/hatchet-man for the president,” said Goldberg. “If John Ashcroft had behaved half as politicized as Eric Holder has, The New York Times would be sparking riots.”
The National Review pointed out that Holder had called himself “an activist attorney general.”
In an August interview, Holder revealed he was proud to be labeled an activist attorney general, adding that those who say the DOJ has an “activist civil-rights division and this is an activist attorney general — I’d say I agree with you 1000 percent and [I am] proud of it.”
Watch the Todd clip via the National Review:
