The soundness of any prediction rests on two factors. It has to be based on a sound theory of how the decision process works that’s driving the events in question. But the prognosticator also has to be right on which process, out of the many possible, the deciders choose to utilize in addressing the situation.
I have no way of knowing with any certainty, that Gonzalez, Rove and Bush won’t use a process other than political calculation to decide whether or not Gonzlaez will resign. If he really valued time with his family, to cite the notorious example, he probably would resign.
But I am very confident that, should the calculation of their political interests be the process that guides their decisions, Gonzalez will not resign. I will take, for purposes of this discussion, the very reasonable assumption that these folks think of themselves as being at war with their political critics, and they will decide the question of whether Gonzalez will resign based on whether resignation will help them win that war or not.
They are on the defensive on the question of the purge of the US Attys. Because assets even more critical to them than Gonzalez are threatened and need to be defended, yes, they might sacrifice Gonzalez to save Rove, or the President. But they would only do this if Gonzalez were so compromised that he could not be defended successfully, or fighting to defend him would threaten to compromise the line of defense drawn behind him to defend Rove and Bush. But firing Gonzalez would have two immediate bad effects on their overall position. It would be an admission that the matter was both important enough to justify firing a Cabinet officer, and that the purge was at least seriously unethical, if not criminal. And Rove’s defense, because it has already been revealed that he at least knew of at least some of the purges, and may even have originated the whole idea, would be outlflanked. How can you fire Gonzalez for something Rove was more deeply inviolved in, without also firing Rove?
Should they then fire both Gonzalez and Rove? Now, there are definitely cases in which it strengthens the defense of the boss to throw underlings overboard. Rumsfeld and "Heckuva Job Brownie", for example, were widely seen as incompetent. Yes, many of us think, especially in the case of Iraq, that it was the President’s policy itself that was and is the problem, not that it was executed incompetently. But Bush definitely helped himself with the many folks in the middle who were willing to blame incompetent execution (and let’s not even think too hard about the criminal stupidity of the policy itself), when he eased out Rumsfeld for incompetence. In the minds of those who thought incompetence was the problem, Bush established himself as someone who was willing to change in response to their brilliant insights. Smart man! Can’t go after the man as long as he’s addressing my concerns. And, if firing Gonzalez would help show that the President finally gets it, firing both Rove and Gonzalez, would show that in spades, right?
Unfortunately for them, the US Atty purge is not about incompetent execution or misfeasance/non-feasance, it’s about criminal malfeasance. It’s not one of those cases in which the overling will improve his position by abandoning the defense of the underlings, at least not those as closely tied to him as Gonzalez and Rove. The boss can always distance himself from bad execution by incompetent subordinates of his supposedly good policy, much more easily than from a bad, as in unethical/criminal/evil, policy itself. What would the alibi for the President be after he cans Rove and Gonzalez for this evil policy? Bush wasn’t informed of this evil policy of purging US Attys? He entrusted the handling of 93 of the most sensitive positions in his administration, totally unsupervised, to two people, Rove and Gonzalez, who both turned out to be evil? These two who turned out so evil were the two closest associates of this President? Two people who were nothing before this President raised them to offices of the highest trust? If they take that line, it won’t be long before people are asking, "What did the President know of this evil plan of his two closest associates, and when did he know it?". The only way they can protect the President on this one is to never admit in the first place that anyone did anything seriously wrong. The outer walls are their only viable defense in this case, and they can’t abandon them without creating greater risk for their king.
Nor is the Miers nomination withdrawal a comparable case. They were on the offensive in that case, hoping to score a bonus, that the strength of their field position didn't really entitle them to, of not only getting a winger on the SC, but also a close personal friend winger, depite her extremely modest qualifications for the job. Yes, I’m sure they weren’t happy to have to back down on her nomination, since she was a close personal friend and all. But there’s a huge difference in backing away from a "nice-to-have" of a crony on the SC in order to secure the "need-to-have" of a winger on the SC, from their situation with Gonzalez, in which they are on the defensive, in their own end zone, with Gonzalez staying put as a "need-to-have-to-survive" bulwark protecting the President's very political survival.
Again, other processes may overtake the decision in this case, but I really do not see a Gonzalez resignation as adding up if they are looking, as they always do, to political advantage. I predict that Gonzalez will be in that select group of administration dead-enders who will leave office only if their bodies are pulled from the burning basement of a rubbled White House. I won’t go so far as to predict this image as a literal, as opposed to figurative, prophecy, but we seem to be moving in that general direction.