AG Nomination Falling Apart

Michael Mukasey seemed like a sure thing. All forecasts pointed to an easy confirmation for Bush's attorney general nominee. Now, in light of his recent answers on torture, things look far less certain.

Paul Kiel at TPMMuckraker has a complete breakdown of where we were on Monday: essentially that Mukasey's refusal to give a straight answer on the constitutionality of waterboarding bred widespread negativity towards the idea of him assuming the role of AG. The reason for the dodgy answer is simple. If Mukasey says waterboarding is unconstitutional, he is declaring it to be torture, and the resulting problems with the Bush administration (and, very likely, some other departments within the executive) would be difficult to untangle and a serious distraction.

Since this happened, one Democratic Senator after another has come out and said that if he can't come out against waterboarding, they can't vote for him. First it was Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy and Senator Dick Durbin. Then Republicans joined in: first McCain, then Graham and Specter joined in for a little casting of aspersions. Now Sanders, Dodd, Obama, and Clinton have joined in, more or less saying that Mukasey is torpedoed unless he comes out against waterboarding, torture, and general matters of unconstitutionality.

Yesterday Mukasey mustered some sort of unstable response, calling waterboarding "repugnant" but still not taking a stand on the legality of the practice. I feel like Mukasey won't go anywhere unless he either does a new dance on this issue with a quickness or becomes part of an intricate deal which includes some other concessions by Bush. Maybe he'll withdraw, maybe he'll be withdrawn, or maybe the vote will come to a crash-and-burn result. Either way, this is a struggle to watch if for nothing else than as an indicator of Bush's remaining level of influence.