In boxing, it’s called the undercard. In the circus, it’s the sideshow. In Washington, it’s the pummeling of Alberto Gonzales.

That Gonzo is a Goner is now writ in stone. The only remaining question is how much longer the White House will let the sad-sack attorney general hang out there like a piñata at a child’s birthday party. With even Republicans lining up to take whacks at him, his punishment is cruel and unusual.

More important, we and all of Washington are wasting time and energy on a distraction. The one and only issue that matters is Iraq. Each day brings fresh disasters and challenges. Whether the deadline for troop withdrawal is imposed by an opportunistic Congress or by a disgusted public, the clock is ticking on our mission. Every minute spent on anything else is a minute wasted. Gonzo included.

Yet, he survives, barely, because Democrats and Republicans find him convenient. For Dems, he’s a safe target. They can get outraged – outraged that politics is involved in the hiring and firing of prosecutors. Their boiling over this scandal in a teapot would have died out had Gonzales not given them the rope to string him up. He claimed to have had no role in the firings, then “clarified” the denial to admit some role and last week pulled the “I don’t recall” routine about a million times too many.

His testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee was notable for how Dems sat back and let furious Republicans lead the charge. No doubt GOPers are in a rush to get to the moment when Gonzales decides to spend more time with his family so they won’t have his millstone dragging them down. Each day the story continues is another day closer to the 2008 elections.

Yet Dems are in no hurry to see Gonzo go. Only a handful of Democrats have called for him to resign, a reflection that Dems can keep ducking the final hard choices on Iraq as long as they have Gonzales to punch around. It makes them look as though they’re busy with important work and being fair at the same time.

Iraq is far, far trickier, substantively and politically. With their demand for deadlines and threats of defunding the troops, Democrats already run the risk of reviving their lethal image of being anti-military. It’s a danger that increased Thursday when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., opened his yap to declare that “this war is lost.” You don’t have to be a Republican to wonder what the troops in the field, and their families, think of that.

For his part, President Bush’s continued support of Gonzales is usually ascribed to their long friendship, but I suspect Bush is using his old buddy as a human shield. The blows that are falling on the attorney general would fall on Bush if Gonzales were to quit or be fired. Dems would smell blood and keep pushing, hoping to get Karl Rove next. His fingerprints are on some of the prosecutor firings, so Dems could score big with their left-wingers by bagging the architect of Bush’s career.

Bush also has interest in delaying a showdown with Congress over Iraq. His troop surge is not complete, and he’s not going to call it off until he thinks it has had a chance to calm Baghdad. All the firepower trained on Gonzales buys him time, even while it adds to the image of White House incompetence.

Only the clock shows mercy. Its march continues, and by summer, or surely by fall, the time for delay will be over. There will be clear progress in Iraq, or there will be no hope. What we do then will be close to a consensus, if not obvious.

If he survives until then, that will be the moment when poor Alberto Gonzales can go home, having served his country above and beyond the call of duty.