Probably the single deadest week of the year.  Nothing happens, and no one cares.  It’s the perfect week for Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to resign.  If a story appears in the Times and there’s no one to read it, does it make a sound?

If one would conduct a flash survey across the courthouses of the nation, I doubt there’s a trial going on anywhere this week.  It used to be that no one ever tried cases in August.  Judges took vacations by going to judge school.  Jurors wouldn’t show up for duty, and nobody wanted to hold that many regular people in contempt.  The few who would show were miserable and desperate to find someone to convict.  Quickly.

This is when you want to do something that you want to blow over quickly enough that no one notices.  When Al Gonzalez put on the AG hat, there was a collective sigh of relief that John Ashcroft was out.  He brought a lot to the job.  It was all bad, but it was something.  You need to have something going for you to be despised.

AG was nothing more than a good soldier.  As a hatchet man for the Bush administration, he did what he was supposed to do.  But he was a small man holding a big job.  He wasn’t up to it.  Even now, I look at the complaints of AG and shrug.  So he fired some US Attorneys because they didn’t live up to the administration’s politics?  Well, you lay down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.  So what.  I can’t get all that upset that their internal squabbling cost a few federal pensions from folks who never, in their wildest dreams, would have thought twice about my view of the Constitution.

So in this lazy, hazy, crazy week of August, AG resigned.  Two weeks from now, we’ll have a hard time remembering his name.  The Congress will continue to banter about how he lied and used politics to guide his official duties.  And the People will become increasingly annoyed with what will become a political sideshow that does absolutely nothing to help anyone.  They guy’s out, get on to something that matters to people.  The Washington obsession with going after individuals who matter along the Beltway is not shared by everyone.

Who’s going to get the AG job for real.  We already know that the Solicitor General, Paul Clement, will sit in the big chair for a while, but not for too long.  Since it’s a given that a Bush AG must be a conservative, Clement would be a solid choice based upon his strength as a lawyer as well as his politics.  But he’s too much of lawyer to be counted on as a good soldier.  You may not agree with his vision of the law, but he’s got integrity in a Nino Scalia (for whom he clerked) sort of way.

There isn’t much time left before the next election, so it’s hard to imagine that anyone with a really good job now would be interested in taking over the helm.  Some of the names, like Ted Olsen, know better than to get involved now.  It would be the crashing end of a good career.  This is a dead end job, comprised mostly of holding up the house of cards left behind at Justice.  No glory.  No one will remember.  No one will care.

My guess is that Jim Comey will be the next AG.  Jim was a former AUSA in the Southern District of New York.  I had some cases with him when he was just a kid (as was I once) in the trenches.  He looked like an AUSA is supposed to look.  He was smart and tough, but that’s the norm in SDNY.  It’s a terrific office, if you are inclined to use the word “terrific” to describe such things, and had its pick of the litter with assistants. 

But Jim Comey was a real person.  There was nothing self-aggrandizing about him.  He wasn’t self-important or pompous.  He was just a smart, solid worker.  It’s been years since I’ve spoken to him, but I can’t imagine that he would be the type of person to be changed by Washington or power. 

More importantly, Jim Comey would be the person who would accept the dead end job because the President asked.  He would take it because he would see it as his duty to do so.  And he would execute it as best he could within the short time frame, and uncomfortable circumstances, that he found.  And whatever he said would be what he believed at all times, even if it didn’t turn out to be the best thing for the administration.  He would bring professionalism and integrity back to Justice in a firm but quiet way.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t see Jim Comey sending out a memo from Justice telling AUSAs to start cutting deals below the Guidelines.  He is not sympathetic to the cause of the defense.  He never cut me a break and I have no reason to expect that he will change.  But I don’t think anyone who might get the AG job would do that.  Ramsey Clark is not going to be asked to take the position.

But I think Jim Comey knows that torture is unAmerican.  I think Jim Comey understands due process.  And I think Jim Comey has a respect for the law, including that part that gives defendants a reasonably fair shot at defending themselves.  So President Bush, if you’re reading this (as I suspect you are), nominate Jim Comey to fill out the term.  He’s the best chance you’ve got to revive trust in the Department of Justice.