FIRST, WE WILL NOMINATE ALL THE LAWYERS…

Common gripes about politicians go as follows:

1. They are all corrupt. Some, perhaps many, are. Some are not. But just try to tell the difference.
2. Once they get into office, they lose touch with their constituents. Some do. But some send government money back to their districts in jumbo jets, box cars, and Chevy Suburbans.
3. Most of them are lawyers. This last one is kind of interesting. It assumes that “lawyer” is synonymous with either 1 or 2, above.

Six of the leading candidates for the presidential nomination of both major parties are lawyers. Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, and Fred Thompson. All but Romney practiced law in some capacity.

WHO WOULD YOU HIRE TO FIX A TRAFFIC CASE? OR CONTEST YOUR GRANDMOTHER’S WILL?

An article from Sunday’s New York Times, "Attorneys at Politics: Would You Hire One to Represent You?”, looks at the law careers of these Prexy wannabees.

YOU could put together a pretty decent little law firm drawing on just the leading presidential candidates.

It would have two former prosecutors, one intense and the other folksy, a civil litigator from a tony regional firm, a superstar trial lawyer and that scrappy kid from Harvard who gave up the big money to do civil rights work. (O.K., it would also sound like a pitch for a doomed TV show.)

SOME VIGNETTES, STARTING WITH THE LEAST LIKELY FIRST:

FRED THOMPSON

As a federal prosecutor in Nashville almost 40 years ago, Mr. Thompson specialized in bank robbery cases. He tried 15 of them, and won 14. But he had mixed feelings about going after people for selling hooch. “My old granddaddy is probably turning over in his grave about my prosecuting moonshiners,” he told The Washington Post in 1985.

Knowing one’s roots is admirable. How is that for a family values candidate?

BARACK OBAMA

Mr. Obama apparently did no trial work, and he chose not to trade his golden credentials, including the presidency of The Harvard Law Review, for a big-money job at a corporate firm. Instead, he worked at a small Chicago civil rights firm, representing people who said they had been discriminated against or denied the right to vote.

But Mr. Obama sometimes seemed ambivalent about the law. In his 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” he wrote that the law could be “a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power — and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.”

A fairly perceptive comment. Having once been around powerful players as an attorney, and having read a few of Judge Posner’s legal opinions, the Author tepidly endorses this analysis. An-oft chanted mantra in the Desert of the Real is YOYOMF.

JOHN EDWARDS

Mr. Edwards’s first case as a plaintiffs’ lawyer was for a man who had overdosed on a drug used in alcohol aversion therapy. Just before jurors began deliberations, he got a settlement offer of $750,000, a huge sum in North Carolina in 1984, and one his client was initially eager to accept. But Mr. Edwards, though he was green, liked his chances and rolled the dice. The jury awarded $3.7 million.

Mr. Edwards, for instance, was known for choosing his cases with care.

“He was very selective,” said James P. Cooney III, who defended a dozen medical malpractice cases brought by Mr. Edwards. “He only took the best cases, and by that I don’t mean the ones with the highest damages. I mean the ones where somebody had done something really bad.”

Mr. Edwards as president could choose some of his fights, but he’d also have to confront crises as they arose.

Most high-level political challenges are not about right and wrong. They are exercises in raw political power. White hats become sullied and gray. Black hats fade in the harsh light of scrutiny.

RUDY GIULIANI

As a prosecutor, Mr. Giuliani also had great discretion in choosing cases. He was accused of moralizing, relentlessness and a lust for the limelight. Wall Street executives still talk about the colleagues Mr. Giuliani’s office arrested at work and took away in handcuffs.

But no one accused him of playing it safe. The case against a Bronx politician, Stanley M. Friedman, was hardly a sure thing, James B. Stewart wrote in his 1987 book, “The Prosecutors,” because juries often believe that such cases are motivated by the defendants’ political beliefs rather than conduct.

The possibility of losing did not seem to bother Mr. Giuliani. “If you never try to accomplish something, you never fail,” he told Mr. Stewart. “I’d rather fail.”

If US presidents fail, they could take half of the world down with them.

HILLARY CLINTON

The first jury trial Mrs. Clinton handled on her own, for instance, concerned the rear end of a rat in a can of pork and beans. She represented the cannery, and she argued that there had been no real harm, as the plaintiff did not actually eat the rat. “Besides,” she wrote in her autobiography, describing her client’s position, “the rodent parts which had been sterilized might be considered edible in certain parts of the world.”

That’s what lawyers are paid to say. No harm, no foul. Oh, and look how much better off Americans are than the poor sad bastards in Darfur that contemplate rat roast as a Ramadan feast.

MITT ROMNEY (AUTHOR’S NOTE: FWIW, The Author believes that Mitt Romney will be the Republican Nominee.)

Romney, unlike his legally educated cohorts, did not practice law. He followed up his law degree with an MBA and went straight into business. Made a lot of money, too.

The candidate most enthusiastic about lawyers seems to be Mr. Romney, who has business and law degrees from Harvard but chose business.

Asked at a debate whether he would need Congressional authorization to attack Iranian nuclear sites, he answered that he would consult his lawyers.

WHOA. COULD THAT “JUMP THE SHARK” OR WHAT?

LET’S GIVE NON-LAWYER CANDIDATE JOHN McCAIN THE LAST WORD...

That answer did not sit well with John McCain, perhaps the only top-tier candidate without a law degree.

“I don’t think that’s the time to call in the lawyers, when we’re in a national security crisis,” he said at last Sunday’s debate. “Those are the last people I’d call in.”

PRACTICING “SELF-HELP” IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL SINCE 1999!