Gonzales has been loyal voice for administration

August 27, 2007

(CNN) -- President Bush has placed a lot of faith in Alberto Gonzales over the last 12 years.
Gonzales' resume glistens with appointments and nominations made by the 43rd president: Texas gubernatorial counsel, Texas secretary of state, Texas Supreme Court justice, White House counsel, U.S. attorney general -- the post he is now leaving.
In a 2005 interview, Gonzales, the nation's first Latino attorney general, recalled how he initially garnered Bush's attention when Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, asked him to come work in the White House in 1990.
At the time, Gonzales was an attorney with Vinson & Elkins, a massive Texas law firm that boasted Enron and Halliburton among its clientele, and Gonzales was ready to excel in the private realm.
"I wanted to stay and make partner, and so I said no," Gonzales told the Academy of Achievement of his encounter with the elder Bush.
Five years later, he was approached by the son. "I first got on his radar screen because I had turned his old man down for a job," Gonzales recalled to the academy....

Solidifying his conservative credentials shortly after joining the White House team in 2001, Gonzales took a shot at affirmative action while conceding it may have gotten him where he is today.
"I know that I've been helped because of my ethnicity," Gonzales told the Los Angeles Times. However, he added, "Hispanics should expect nothing more than an equal opportunity. For us to now say that we should be given an opportunity because of our ethnicity, irrespective of our competence, means that we'll be discriminating against someone else who doesn't happen to be Hispanic." [To read the entire article, go to: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/27/gonzales.profile/index.html ]