WASHINGTON, June 25 (UPI) -- Ted Olson, solicitor general of the United States, is resigning.
Politics aside, Olson ranked only behind Ken Starr as the most effective appellate lawyer in the country. His leaving is the surest possible sign that the first Bush administration is in twilight.
His departure also may trigger speculation about his boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Will Ashcroft want to return and serve in a second Bush administration, assuming there is one? Will the president even want him back?
Interesting speculation.
Olson announced Thursday that he had told the president in a letter he was leaving his post in July to return to what will surely be a lucrative private practice. He thanked President George W. Bush for the "enormous privilege" of serving with all the "outstanding men and women in your administration."
A Justice Department news release Thursday touted Olson's "extraordinary record of success before the Supreme Court."
That's an understatement.
According to the Justice Department count, Olson participated in 26 arguments before the Supreme Court as the government's top courtroom lawyer. "He won 20 of the 23 that have been decided to date (with two additional arguments outstanding; one was dismissed with no decision on the merits)," the department said, "including: the Cleveland school-voucher case, the child online protection act, the campaign finance law, the Pledge of Allegiance and the vice president's energy task force case."
Well, sort of.
The pledge case, of course, was decided on standing -- a majority of the justices said a non-custodial father had no right to bring the challenge on behalf of his elementary school-age daughter -- and left the constitutionality of the phrase "under God" still pretty much up in the air.
Vice President Dick Cheney's case was decided Wednesday, and its outcome was just as murky. Cheney is trying to keep the records of the national energy board secret in the face of allegations he let energy-industry executives and lobbyists contribute heavily to its deliberations.
The vice president and Olson wanted the justices to block a federal judge's order compelling Cheney to disgorge the records. Instead, the high-court majority ruled that an appeals court has the jurisdiction to block the judge's order. It did not decide whether that should be done.
The real triumph in the Cheney case is that the dispute now returns to the lower courts for more hearings, and a resolution for the whole mess is being pushed back well beyond the November elections.
Even before he became solicitor general, Olson was an outstanding litigator before the Supreme Court.
Perhaps you remember a little case called Bush vs. Gore? The present occupant of the White House had much reason to show gratitude to the lawyer who won it.
Nominating Olson as solicitor general was actually pretty small potatoes, when you think about it.
One of the most striking things about Olson, and you hear this from a variety of people, is how nice he is.
A few days before he was confirmed, I encountered him as he waited, hands in pockets, behind a long slow line of tourists and schoolchildren trying to get into the Supreme Court. I had to bring him up to the front of the line and explain to the Supreme Court police that the man would shortly become solicitor general, and perhaps it would be best if he went through the metal detector next.
Olson emptied his pockets and did as he was told.
His confirmation process was rocky. His nomination barely passed the Senate, 51-47, because of his highly partisan past.
Olson's tenure as solicitor general was not without tragedy. His wife, conservative commentator and writer Barbara Olson, was killed aboard the flight that slammed into the Pentagon during the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. His grief for her was intensely private and somehow noble in an age when many public figures wear their emotions on their sleeves.
In the natural order of things, Olson, like Starr, would spend a few years earning a great deal of money now before becoming a Supreme Court nominee for a Republican president.
Like Starr, Olson is a moderate conservative with a brilliant legal mind. Either one would have made an outstanding justice.
Neither will achieve that honor.
Both were major players in the investigative hysteria of the 1990s, when conservatives abandoned civil discourse and sanity itself in favor of vitriol.
Starr, a thoroughly decent man, was the captive of rabid deputies in Little Rock and Washington in what historians will surely call the hijacking of the U.S. Treasury to support a partisan witch hunt.
Though he was far less public, Olson was active as a lawyer and consultant to some of the most cockamamie true believers on the right. And if one witness from those days is credible, former right-wing errand boy turned right-wing scourge David Brock, Olson didn't much care if the mud being slung was true, as long as it was damaging.
He should have known better.
Olson and Starr will still garner many honors in their long careers. But what might have been a smooth voyage to the Supreme Court will ultimately founder on a rock called Clinton.
So much talent wasted.
(Mike Kirkland is UPI's senior legal affairs correspondent. He has covered the Supreme Court and other parts of the legal community since 1993.)
(Please send comments to nationaldesk@upi.com.)