A.G. Replacement Narrow Down to Five

The Politico has listed five finalists to replace Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Here are the five finalists:

—Michael Mukasey was suggested by Democrats as well as Republicans during the search process. He was Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York until he rejoined the New York City law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP as a partner in September 2006. Earlier, he was Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Criminal Division of the Southern District of New York, where he was chief of the Official Corruption Unit. He spent 18 years on the bench, six of them as chief judge. Known as "Judge Mukasey," he is a member of Rudy Giuliani's Justice Advisory Committee.

—Theodore B. (Ted) Olson, known as one of the nation's premier Supreme Court lawyers, was solicitor general under President Bush from June 2001 to July 2004. Under President Ronald Reagan, Olson was Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel from 1981 to 1984. He rankles Democrats because he successfully represented George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the Supreme Court for Bush v. Gore cases that decided the 2000 presidential election. Olson is now a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Washington office. He is a member of the President's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, created at the suggestion of the 9/11 commission. Olson is chairman of Rudy Giuliani's Justice Advisory Committee.

—Laurence H. Silberman, a senior circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985 and took senior status in 2000. He was co-chairman (with former Senator Charles S. Robb) of the WMD commission created by President Bush in 2004. Silberman has a varied career that includes being a partner in law firms in Honolulu and Washington, D.C., and a banker in San Francisco. He was a U.S. Army private for a year beginning in 1957, was an appellate-division attorney at the National Labor Relations Board, was solicitor of Labor from1969-1970, undersecretary of Labor from 1970-1973, deputy attorney general from 1974-1975 and Ambassador to Yugoslavia from1975-1977. He is now the Distinguished Visitor from the Judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.

—George J. Terwilliger, a partner at White & Case in Washington, was Deputy Attorney General, the second-ranking official at Justice, under President George H.W. Bush, from 1991-93. He served briefly as Acting Attorney General of the United States. He was United States Attorney in Vermont from 1986 to 1991, a connection that could help him with Sen. Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). Terwilliger was senior counsel to Gov. George W. Bush's presidential campaign on the Florida recount cases.

—Larry D. Thompson, who is PepsiCo's Senior Vice President, Government Affairs, General Counsel and Secretary, would be the nation's first African-American attorney general. He was Deputy Attorney General to John Ashcroft from May 2001 to August 2003, and remains popular in the Justice Department. He has noted in speeches that he was the first African-American to serve as United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, a position he held from 1982 to 1986. Thompson is a member of Rudy Giuliani's Justice Advisory Committee. He was a possibility to succeed Ashcroft (the slot went to Gonzales), and has been mentioned as a potential Supreme Court nominee.

My prediction: Ted Olson.

My reasons: First and foremost, as a former solicitor general, Olson has argued somewhat successfully in the one place where the War on Terror has had a few rebukes: The Supreme Court. John Yoo, in his masterful War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror , also depicts Olson as the kind of career public servant that had already made the nation proud.
Besides his years in Washington and the love the DOJ already has for him, Olson has the moral legitimacy card to play. He lost his wife on 9-11. The Democratic press will probably not go after him on the personal level that they have other Bush Administration nominees.

Why it won't be the other guys: Laurence H. Silberman has been talked about as a potential Supreme Court nominee for the last few years and it seems silly that the Bush Administration would want to take away a good judge from the bench for only a few years. While Mukasey has the reputation of being tough on crime, he doesn't have the terrorism experience and has never argued a case before the Supreme Court. Terwilliger will remind Democrats of their judicial and political defeat in 2000. Larry D. Thompson is a possibility, but I sincerely doubt that he'll get the job. For starters, his nomination would be another Gonzales-like nomination designed to get the support of a vital constituency. The thinking goes that Thompson, who is black, will bring more black Americans to the G.O.P. This is wishful thinking at best. I can find little evidence that Americans even know who their Attorney General is, to say nothing that they'll base their votes in 2008 on a man who would go out with the old Administration. To think that it will somehow compel black Americans to go to the polls for the GOP is unfounded.

Thoughts?