I know, I know, it’s bad luck to talk about personnel decisions before an election. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck-and-neck, and we should be keeping our eyes on the prize—winning on November 5—before we start pitching our dream cabinets. And yet, in the wake of last week’s Democratic National Convention, discussions about appointments in a potential Harris-Walz administration are already picking up steam, with one position in particular getting attention: attorney general.

Some “prominent” Democrats, Politico reported on Wednesday, are ready to move on from Attorney General Merrick Garland. “My assumption is that members of the cabinet and sub-cabinet will move on and that, if Kamala is elected, she will want to put in her own team,” said former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. To that end, the article cited 10 Democrats being talked about as potential Harris A.G.s.

It’s never a great idea to count your chickens before they hatch. But it’s understandable that Democrats are talking openly about who might succeed Garland, given how disastrous his tenure has been. And I have one exceptional Democrat in mind whose name didn’t make it into Politico’s report.

There have been two massive flaws in Garland’s approach to leading the Department of Justice. First, as The Nation’s Elie Mystal pointed out in February, he has acted more like a judge than an advocate and prosecutor. Instead of fighting like hell on important issues like state abortion bans, he’s preemptively thrown in the towel on any case that looked likely to get overturned by a higher court. And in some areas, he’s taken stances in opposition to the administration’s policies. For example, though Biden pledged to “strategically support ongoing plaintiff-driven climate litigation against polluters,” Garland has refused to initiate an investigation of Big Oil—despite multiple requests from congressional Democrats that he do so. In fact, he even escalated efforts by Trump’s DOJ to quash a landmark youth climate case.

Even worse,........

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