The President had the right, and was certainly within his bounds, to fire those U.S. attorneys, but the inept handling of the matter is incomprehensible:

What it failed to consider was the new political landscape. A White House and Justice Department on their game, scanning the Schumer-Feinstein battlefield ahead, would have sent Mr. McNulty to the Hill with a very different script. The deputy AG would have laid out the president's absolute right to hire and fire, and pleasantly noted that while the eight attorneys were all fine people, the chief was making a change. He would also have declined to serve up any gory specifics of the administration's personnel decisions. If details had later leaked, the administration would have at least staked out a principled position, and an honest one at that.

Instead, Mr. McNulty's "performance" line inspired the fired prosecutors to defend themselves, namely by dishing up nefarious reasons for their pink slips. Congressional Democrats were able to spin those accusations further after emails blew a hole through Mr. McNulty's testimony. Instead of standing on principle, the administration found itself defending against allegations it had canned attorneys to stop politically sensitive investigations, or to reward cronies with jobs. Mr. Gonzales also had to admit "incomplete information" had been relayed to Congress. That alone was enough to inspire Mr. Schumer and House Judiciary Committee pit bull John Conyers to demand the testimony of top officials, and to guarantee many more weeks--if not months--of a drubbing.

Bringing on an unnecessary drubbing seems to have become a talent of this administration. One would have hoped that this late in the game the administration would have learned how to avoid such an obviously avoidable unforced error.