The NYT is reporting that Michael B. Mukasey is likely to be the President’s next nominee for Attorney General. I know nothing about this man, but he sounds like a reasonable candidate:

Unlike Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Mukasey is not a close confidant of the president. Nor is he a Washington insider. But people in both political parties say he possesses the two qualities that Mr. Bush has been looking for in a nominee: a law-and-order sensibility that dovetails with the president’s agenda for the fight against terror, and the potential to avoid a bruising confirmation battle with the Democrats who now run the Senate.

The problem with the report is the next paragraph:

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who led the fight to oust Mr. Gonzales, issued a statement on Sunday evening praising Mr. Mukasey — a suggestion that Democrats, who are already challenging Mr. Bush over the war in Iraq, have little appetite for another big fight.

Well that might be true. but to me it suggests rather more strongly that Mr Musakey is OK. Yes, he’s a conservative, and the fact that Mr Bush approves of him automatically counts against him for me, but both of those are inevitable. The law, however we might wish it so, isn’t black and white, and where there is interpretation to be done a President will want it to be done according to his philosophy. It looks to me like the Democrats are saying “He’s a reasonable, principled kind of guy, so subject to some questioning he’s fine by us”. That’s what’s supposed to happen; not needing to fight isn’t the same as not wanting a fight.