At this point in his presidency, Barack Obama has an opportunity to build consensus. With Eric Holder’s resignation, he should consider taking this opportunity to mend fences and revive a Cabinet once billed as a “team of rivals.” So how about a Republican for attorney general? I have a candidate in mind: former Solicitor General Ted Olson, who will probably curse me for making the suggestion.
No one can argue seriously that Olson lacks the bona fides to serve as attorney general: His name was considered during the tail end of George W. Bush’s second term, and he was shortlisted on several occasions as a possible nominee to the Supreme Court as well. At the time, Olson was blocked from the AG post because, in the words of Sen. Harry Reid, “He’s a partisan, and the last thing we need as an attorney general is a partisan.”
Harman then goes on to praise Olson’s “bipartisan” work on gay marriage and a few other things, then mentions that he is now “married to a card-carrying Democrat,” as if that matters.
The bottom line is that Harman finds Olson acceptable because he isn’t in lock-step with Republican positions on everything. Democrats demand political purity from the those they promote through the ranks of the judicial system and they don’t quite grasp that our lawyers are more interested in-get this-the law.
It doesn’t really matter how Harman got to this point but we all know that Olson has to be better than whomever The Idiot King has on his short list.
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