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At the same moment we learned Alberto Gonzales would step down as attorney general, that favorite Washington parlor game, “Replacement Pick,” kicked into high gear. Initial speculation focused on Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a former prosecutor, federal judge, and senior Justice Department official, who, some have long thought, has had his eye on an an eventual AG nod or a Supreme Court nomination in exchange for his DHS service.

But the odds now seem against Chertoff. The chatter I’m picking up has him as a long-shot pick. One concern is that moving any cabinet secretary into the AG slot would mean two confirmation hearings, at a time when the administration would prefer to keep its chieftains out of Congress’ crosshairs.

I see three big reasons why Chertoff is a radioactive pick as AG. Any one of these might not kill his chances, but cumulatively, I think they add up to a no-go.

1.) Katrina. Today is the second anniversary of the storm’s devastation of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Chertoff had been on the job six months at the time, and his department’s response, like the hurricane itself, was a disaster. The Gulf still reels from the storms’ effects. (The Times Picayune had this message, blasted across its front page, for President Bush, who’s visiting the region today.) Some think Chertoff escaped much of the blame for the response, and even though his duties as attorney general would have nothing to do with storm recovery, confirmation hearings would force him to answer questions about his actions two years ago.

2.) Torture Memo and Guantanamo Detainees. It’s worth revisiting Chertoff’s confirmation hearings, at which he faced intense questioning about his role in crafting a memo on detainee treatment. The questions held up the hearings for a time. Mark Benjamin digs deep on this in a piece for Salon, in which he pointedly asks, “Did Chertoff lie to Congress about Guantanamo?“

3.) Politicization and mismanagement at DHS. The new attorney general is supposed to restore credibility and career morale at the Justice Department. Given Chertoff’s mixed track record on both fronts at Homeland Security, it’s questionable whether lawmakers would see him as the right man for that job. The department is in the midst of a transition from mostly political leadership to career managers. Under Chertoff, the trend towards political management–and politicization–was palpable. The House Homeland Security Committee has cited “critical leadership vacancies” at the department; a quarter of top positions remain unfilled. As I wrote in June, DHS has a reputation as a land of misfit toys, a place where Bush loyalists and partisans get patronage posts for which they lack qualifications. Despite Chertoff’s efforts now to turn that tide, the reputation has stuck, and one can imagine how lawmakers would judge skeptically his ability to cleanse Justice of the stain of partisanship.

So, who are the leading contenders to replace Gonzales? The field appears wide open at the moment, which is a good indication that the White House is slowly and deliberately reaching out to several candidates, either to feel out their interest or to begin wearing them down so they’ll eventually agree to take the job.

For my part, I’m putting early money on a dark horse candidate, who, a colleague perceptively noted, is a protege of White House counsel Fred Fielding, the man heading up the AG search. I’m going with former federal judge Michael Luttig, now general counsel at Boeing. The only hole missing in this man’s impeccable resume is a stint as attorney general. Luttig had a dust-up, of sorts, with the administration over the Jose Padilla case. (He had ruled the administration could hold Padilla, a US citizen, as an enemy combatant, and later refused the government’s request to transfer him to criminal court.) But I’m not convinced that rules him out as a pick. (It will certainly provide fuel for the president’s critics, however.) Still, Fielding is known to consider Luttig one of his proudest accomplishments. See Luttig’s resignation letter, in which he thanks Bush’s father for making his dreams come true, and sums up his view of the judiciary’s role in the war on terror. Fielding, you should remember, also groomed another bright jurist by the name of John Roberts.

Scenario 2: In a replay of the 2000 Cheney-led search for a vice president, Fielding himself is put up for the job. Bush has a rough track record with White House counsels turned-AG (read, ahem, Al Gonzales), and Harriet Miers didn’t fare so well in her attempted jump to greener pastures. But Fielding is respected by Republicans and Democrats, and by several accounts, despite his role in stalling the White House’s response to congressional subpoenas on US Attorneys and warrantless wiretapping, is reportedly well-liked by both sides.

Presumably, McConnell’s letter is meant to provide legal cover for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose testimony about his 2004 nighttime visit to John Ashcroft’s hospital room left Specter and his colleagues wondering if Gonzales had told them the whole truth about internal disagreements over the NSA “program” at the Justice Department. Gonzales tried to tell Senators that there was no disagreement over the program that the president acknowledged back in December 2005, which McConnell now says was just the wiretapping component, or, in his words, “the targeting for interception without a court order of international communications of Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist organizations coming into our going out of the United States.”

McConnell is asking members of Congress to change the law that governs such interceptions–the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act– and apparently there’s significant disagreement over whether it can be applied to totally “foreign” communications that still pass through cables in the United States.

McConnell’s letter to Specter can be viewed in light of his very public lobbying efforts, and not solely as a blocking maneuver for Gonzales. Putting it out there that the NSA is, in fact, undertaking other intelligence activities under presidential order strengthens his argument that the intelligence laws need significant overhaul, not just minor tweaking. Remember, McConnell is a former NSA director, and has strong opinions on adapting intelligence laws to the hunt for terrorists. McConnell also led Booz Allen Hamilton’s intelligence division–after leaving NSA–and was involved in the Defense Department’s Total Information Awareness program, another effort to track terrorist movements and anticipate their plots.

Bottom line: McConnell has been trying to “modernize,” if you like, the intelligence community for the past several years. He has been more public about these efforts than many senior intelligence officials, and will continue to be so. He’s not the spokesman for this effort just because he’s the DNI–this is a personal mission for McConnell, as well.

UPDATE: According to the AP, Democratic leaders are signaling that a deal on FISA might be imminent.

Ashcroft’s attorney general designate, Jim Comey, provided riveting blow-by-blow details of the event during his own testimony a few months ago, and told senators that he thought Gonzales and Card were trying to take advantage of Ashcroft’s weakened state in order to get him to sign-off on a reauthorization of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program.

No, no, no…big misunderstanding, Gonzales said this morning. “We went there because we thought it was important for [Ashcroft] to know where the congressional leadership was on this,” Gonzales told Senators. He said that lawmakers from both parties had urged him and Card to ensure that the NSA program–which Gonzales didn’t actually identify in his testimony–was re-approved before a pending expiration deadline. (As an aside, you could count on two hands the number of lawmakers who actually knew the program existed.) The way Gonzales tells it, he and Card were just there to bring Ashcroft up to speed on Congress’ thinking.

The senators are finding this hard to believe, given Comey’s account. He said that not only did the White House call over to Aschroft’s hospital room and inform his wife that Card and Gonzales were on the way–and Comey seems to recall that that call may have come from President Bush himself–but that when the two men showed up, they were carrying an envelope, in which we are to presume was a document requiring Ashcroft’s signature.

What’s more, Comey testified that Ashcroft raised himself up from his hospital bed and read Gonzales and Card the riot act, ticking off all the reasons why he wasn’t willing to reauthorize the warrantless surveillance. This was no friendly exchange. Comey said, “[Ashcroft] lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me…”And then, in a line that would make a Hollywood action writer blush, Ashcroft declared, “But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general. There is the attorney general.” He pointed to Comey. This is edge-of-your seat material.

What happened next? Comey said, “The two men [Gonzales and Card] did not acknowledge me. They turned and walked from the room.”

Now, today, Gonzales insisted that he and Card hadn’t come to pressure Ashcroft into signing anything. “Clearly if he had been competent and understood the facts and had been inclined to do so, yes we would have asked him,” Gonzales added. “Andy Card and I didn’t press him. We said ‘Thank you’ and we left.”

Gonzales clarified this way: “We would not have sought nor did we intend to seek to get any approval from General Ashcroft if in fact he was not fully competent to make that decision.” Key phrase: “if in fact he was not fully competent.” Gonzales isn’t denying that he and Card went to the hospital to get Ashcroft’s approval. He’s just saying that they didn’t intend to seek it if he was not fully competent. At the very least, it seems that Gonzales and Card went to Ashcroft’s bed side to see how sick he really was. There’s no doubt about what they wanted, and according to Comey, they got it–the White House later reauthorized the program without the attorney general’s signature. It took the threat of resignation–by Comey, Ashcroft, and FBI Director Robert Mueller–to compel President Bush to order his staff to bring the NSA program in line with Comey’s and Ashcroft’s concerns.