''He'd be closely scrutinized, but at the end of the day he would probably be confirmed,'' she said. ''It would certainly be a departure for the Bush administration to send up a consensus candidate.''
Bush critics contended the Mukasey nomination was evidence of Bush's weakened political clout as he heads into the final 15 months of his presidency. The president's supporters say Mukasey has impeccable credentials, is a strong, law-and-order jurist, especially on national security issues, and will restore confidence in the Justice Department.
Mukasey has drawn lukewarm reviews from some members of the GOP's right flank. Some legal conservatives and Republican activists have expressed reservations about Mukasey's legal record and past endorsements from liberals, and were drafting a strategy to oppose his confirmation.
William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said some of his fellow conservatives are upset that former solicitor general Ted Olson, who represented Bush before the Supreme Court in the contested 2000 election, was not chosen. Last week, some Senate Democrats threatened to block confirmation of Olson.
''There is a case for nominating Olson, and inviting a Senate confirmation fight over issues of legal philosophy and executive power,'' Kristol wrote in a column posted on the Internet soon after he learned Mukasey was likely Bush's pick. ''There is also a case, though, for nominating an attorney general equally as first-rate as Olson, but one who'll be easily confirmed — and who will, I believe, come to judgments similar to Olson's on key issues of executive power and the war on terror.''
Mukasey is not as well-known as Olson in Washington.
''I don't know enough about him, so he has to pass that test for me, go through that filter,'' Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., another member of the Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Sunday. ''Is he going to be the president's guy? ... Or, is he going to stand up and defend the Constitution and be the people's lawyer as well?''
During his 18 years as a judge, Mukasey presided over thousands of cases, including the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was accused of plotting to destroy New York City landmarks. In the 1996 sentencing of co-conspirators in the case, Mukasey accused the sheik of trying to spread death ''in a scale unseen in this country since the Civil War.'' He then sentenced the blind sheik to life in prison.
Mukasey was nominated to the federal bench in 1987 by President Reagan. He was chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York before he rejoined the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler as a partner in September 2006.
He first joined Patterson Belknap in 1976 after serving as assistant U.S. attorney in the criminal division of the Southern District, where he rose to head its official corruption unit.
The Mukasey nomination could be Bush's last major Cabinet appointment.
Friday was the last day of Gonzales' 2-1/2 years at Justice. Solicitor General Paul Clement will serve as acting attorney general until the Senate confirms Gonzales' replacement.
Gonzales' conflicting public statements about the firings of the U.S. prosecutors led Democrats and Republicans alike to question his honesty. Their charges were compounded by his later sworn testimony about the terrorist surveillance program, which was contradicted by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and former senior Justice Department officials.
A congressional investigation into the firings recently shifted its focus onto whether the attorney general lied to Congress. The Justice Department also has opened an internal investigation into the matters.
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Associated Press Writers Lara Jakes Jordan and Devlin Barrett in Washington contributed to this report.