Substitute Clement Is Well-Liked Conservative
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — Paul Clement, who will serve as interim attorney general, is a meticulous, affable conservative with friends across the political spectrum.
As solicitor general, Mr. Clement holds the fourth-ranking position at the Justice Department. He was asked by President Bush to head the agency until a new attorney general is nominated, then confirmed by the Senate.
With the resignation of Attorney General Gonzales, as well as earlier departures of the next two officials in line, Clement is the Justice Department’s highest-ranking official who has been confirmed by the Senate.
In his current post, Mr. Clement is the administration’s top lawyer at the Supreme Court. He regularly argues the most important cases that come before the court, defending Mr. Bush’s anti-terrorism program as well as federal laws imposing limits on abortion and campaign fundraising.
Mr. Clement, 41, has worked for former Attorney General Ashcroft and Justice Antonin Scalia, stalwarts of the right in American politics and law. He once belonged to the conservative Federalist Society and continues to speak often at its events.
Yet Senator Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, has been among Mr. Clement’s biggest boosters, principally because of Mr. Clement’s Supreme Court defense of the landmark campaign finance law that Feingold co-authored. Mr. Clement also comes from Wisconsin.
Solicitor generals for the most part have low profiles in the lief of any administration. One of history’s great exceptions to that rule was Robert Bork. At the height of the Watergate scandal, then-Solictor General Bork did what his two superiors would not do — and obeyed President Nixon’s order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973.
Mr. Clement is not facing a similar crisis, although he has been asked by senators to order an independent investigation of aspects of Mr. Gonzales’ tenure. So far, he has not publicly answered that request.
Prior to serving as solicitor general, Mr. Clement was the deputy to his predecessor in the post, Theodore Olson. He also worked for Mr. Ashcroft, then a Missouri senator, and filed supporting briefs with the Supreme Court on behalf of Mr. Bush in the dispute over the 2000 presidential election.
He earlier clerked for Mr. Scalia and Judge Lawrence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Mr. Clement quit the Federalist Society when he joined the Bush administration in 2001.
