During Clinton’s second term, I spent a few months covering the Justice Department for the Wall Street Journal. It was not a beat that suited me — too many lawyers, not enough humanity — but it left several lasting impressions. One of these impressions has to do with President-elect Obama’s attorney general nominee, Eric Holder.
Holder is a very smart lawyer who will have the president’s back. But that’s part of the problem with the nomination. Holder is at heart a political animal, not a legal one. That isn’t always disqualifying in an attorney general, but it is exactly the wrong kind of leadership for the department. Justice was badly politicized by the Bush people, famously in the dismissals and appointments of U.S. attorneys.
The Clinton Justice Department wasn’t nearly as corrupt, but its leaders, Holder among them, had several major failures of judgment. Much has been made of Holder’s work to support pardons for folks like Marc Rich and Carlos Vignali, and with good reason. They were intensely political and unjustified. But the pardons also revealed a problem that permeated Clinton justice: poor management.
Attorney General Janet Reno and her top aides, including Holder, often sent contradictory signals and delayed decision-making far too long. This happened in all sorts of areas — the INS was a mess, the department’s vaunted “100,000-cops-on-the-street” was a house of cards , and the FBI, as we now know, was failing in its mission of protecting the country from terrorism.
The Elian Gonzalez mess, which I covered, was typical. At each turn, the Justice Department failed to make decisions. Instead, the top managers chose delay, and delay made things worse. Whatever you think of the ultimate decision to return Gonzalez to his father in Cuba, that decision should have been made sooner. Instead, by delaying, Reno and Holder ended up waiting until the Gonzalez’s family’s South Florida home was surrounded by hostile protestors. And so Justice ultimately had to send in a heavily armed team to seize a 6-year-old boy.
Obama and the country desperately need a brand-new team at justice, folks who have no ties to the Bush or Clinton Justice Departments. Instead, Obama, by appointing Holder, will own his appointee’s mixed record. Memo to the president-elect: In a country full of lawyers, isn’t there a smart, straight-arrow prosecutor who has a tenacity to investigate the legacy of corruption that the Bush administration leaves behind? Or how about an legal academic with a background in science and/or intelligence, who can become a key player in making rational legal policies for those times?
I’d like to see Republicans help President Obama, not obstruct him. But by putting a hold on Holder’s nomination, Republicans would do the country — and the president-elect — a favor.