Bush's Supreme Challenge

With a court retirement likely, Al Gonzales is a Bush favorite. But is that enough?

Even for a White House in which staff members pride themselves on being low-key, Alberto Gonzales is inconspicuous. The flashiest thing he has done recently is briefly regrow his mustache. And yet the modest, Harvard-educated lawyer has a riveting story. The son of migrant workers in Texas, he grew up in a house his dad built, sharing two bedrooms with seven siblings. With no running hot water, the family boiled their bathwater on the stove. No phone meant that Gonzales had to walk to the corner pay phone to call his friends. Even the town's name was Humble. Gonzales, 47, has...

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