Senate confirmation hearings promise drama

On Monday, Schumer was unwilling to offer names of his favored replacement for Gonzales.

"I'm not going to get into names today. I will be quietly suggesting some names to people in the White House. ... You don't want to create a division, you don't want a Democratic name out there at this point," he said.

But back in April, Schumer offered his own short list of nominees to replace Gonzales:

• Larry Thompson, former number two man of the Justice Department in President Bush’s first term. Thompson, now general counsel of Pepsico, is an old friend of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and appeared as a witness for Thomas during his Senate confirmation hearings.
• James Comey, who served as deputy in the Justice Department after Thompson left.
• Retired federal trial judge Michael Mukasey

Just last week, Mukasey wrote a lengthy op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal in which he urged Congress to consider the creation of special national security courts to deal with accused terrorists such as Jose Padilla.

Luke Frazza / AFP/Getty Images In 2004, President Bush appeared at an event in Buffalo, N.Y. with then-Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson. Key Democrat Sen. Charles Schumer has suggested Thompson as a replacement for Alberto Gonzales.

When Gonzales won Senate confirmation in 2005 by a vote of 60 to 36, five Democratic senators voted for him.

One of those Democrats, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, issued a statement Monday saying, "I had high hopes for his success. His failures have become a disappointment to those of us who had shown faith in him...."

Winning the support of centrist Democrats such as Nelson and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who also voted to confirm Gonzales in 2005, will be essential to Bush's hopes of getting his choice confirmed.

In a statement that was markedly less critical of Gonzales than other Democrats were, Lieberman said his exit "removes a distraction from the important work of the Department of Justice. ... As he leaves public service, the attorney general deserves our appreciation for his work for our nation."

Lieberman added, “We are at war, and it is imperative that we have an attorney general that inspires trust" and urged his colleagues to "move quickly in a bipartisan manner to consider the new nominee,” once Bush reveals who it is.

Need for top-tier scholar or practitioner
“The person appointed should have past Justice Department experience and have standing in the legal community as a scholar or practitioner of note," said Doug Kmiec, a top Justice Department official in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The nominee should "be willing to serve as a transitional figure capable of bridging the gap between the extraordinary career talent, the remaining presidential appointees, and the on-going work of the Department, especially as it relates to the war on terror and the work of the U.S. Attorneys as it pertains to civil rights,” Kmiec added.

“The best model would be someone of the quality of an Edward Levi or Griffin Bell or William French Smith,” said Kmiec, who now teaches at Pepperdine Law School in California.

Levi, dean of the University of Chicago law school and a scholar far removed from politics, was appointed by President Ford in 1975. Bell, a federal appeals court judge, was Jimmy Carter’s pick in 1977. Smith, a lawyer in private practice, was chosen by Reagan in 1981.

Kmiec added, "the president might be well advised to pick a senior court of appeals judge appointed by Reagan; perhaps, Diarmuid O’Scannlain of the Ninth Circuit, Kenneth Ripple of the Seventh Circuit, or Edith Jones of the Fifth."

He said, "The integrity of these individuals is unquestioned; by virtue of judicial office, they have been freed of partisanship for some time, yet, by virtue of appointment, would be acceptable to the base of the President’s party."

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