Opinion: A helpful Ford idea for Biden: Choose an apolitical attorney general

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

As the Justice Department under Atty. Gen. William Barr continues to be accused of doing President Trump’s dirty work, former Vice President Joe Biden has an opportunity. He should make rehabilitating the image of the department a major theme of his campaign and, if elected, his administration.

In doing so, Biden should look to the example of a former president who served in the aftermath of Watergate — a scandal that saw John Mitchell, who had served as President Nixon’s attorney general before resigning to head Nixon's re-election committee, sentenced to prison.

The president I have in mind is not Jimmy Carter, who was elected in 1976 after promising a government as good as the people. During his campaign Carter proposed taking the attorney general out of politics and prescribing a term of six years. But that idea went nowhere.

No, the president whose example Biden should follow if elected is the incumbent Carter defeated, Gerald Ford. Amid the crisis in confidence left by Watergate, Ford chose as his attorney general not a political intimate such as Mitchell (or Robert F. Kennedy, who was President John F. Kennedy's brother) but an apolitical legal scholar. Edward H. Levi, named attorney general by Ford in 1975, had been president of the University of Chicago and before that dean of its law school.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/opinion-a-helpful-ford-idea-for-biden-choose-an-apolitical-attorney-general/ar-BB15V684?ocid=msn360

[brush]

1. We Dems have a deep bench already for AG...Harris, Warren...

Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Booker and on and on.

[EarlG]

2. Unfortunately

There’s no way that anybody can possibly present themselves as “apolitical” in this day and age. See the sliming of Amb. Yovanovich and Lt. Col. Vindman, for example.

We live in an age where the RW noise machine will spin wearing a face mask into a political statement. Media types should stop fantasizing about finding “apolitical” appointments.

[elleng]

3. Sally Yates

[irisblue]

4. Maybe a more alert AG to Ford would have pointed out how the pardon would embolden future bad actors