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Pundits assess agenda for next attorney general

(CNN) -- President-elect George W. Bush's choice for attorney general could be a signal of how his administration will deal with a number sensitive issues, including crime, environmental laws and antitrust regulations.

On CNN's Burden of Proof Tuesday, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the divided climate in the U.S. Senate is likely to influence Bush's selection.

"He will want someone of unquestioned integrity. Someone who will act in a way that is nonpartisan who will make judgments on the merits of each decision and who doesn't have baggage of an ideological kind either on the left or on the right," Blumenthal said.

He said the next attorney general will have to cooperate with international leaders to fight the threat of terrorism, as well as with political leaders in the United States

TRANSCRIPT Burden of Proof transcript What Kind of Justice Department will there be in a new administration?

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Former California Attorney General Dan Lundgren was also on the program and said it is important for the nation's top law enforcement official to be objective, but that does not mean he or she will not have a philosophy.

He said the most important thing the next attorney general will need to do is build relationships with state and local law enforcement.

One of the big issues the Bush Justice Department is going to have to consider is how to handle the Microsoft case. The software giant is appealing a court decision earlier this year that found the company violated antitrust law and should be broken up.

Former Justice Department antitrust attorney Steven Sunshine said he thought the Bush administration would find that breaking up the company was too drastic.

"It's applying the heavy hand of government in a situation where perhaps it's not all that clear that it's the appropriate remedy," Sunshine said. "An assistant attorney general may well come to the conclusion that, yes, Microsoft broke the law five, six, seven years ago but the world's moved on and breaking it up could do more harm than good."

Lundgren said the new administration has an obligation to at least review the remedy, even if it thinks breaking up the company is the right thing to do.

Even if the Justice Department changes its position, Microsoft will still have pressure from 19 states that brought a class-action lawsuit that was merged with the government's case.

"The states, 19 of us, are in this battle for the long haul, and we will stay the course. And by the way, those 19 states are Republican and Democrat across the country, big and small states. So I don't think there will be change of approach on our part," Blumenthal said. Connecticut is one of the states suing Microsoft.

He said that even if the Bush Administration decides that breaking up Microsoft is too strong a penalty, it will still have to address the ruling that the company violated the law and come up with another remedy.

The new attorney general may also have to deal with some controversial criminal issues, including mandatory minimum drug sentences and the federal death penalty.

"It is not quite Nixon going to China, but I think that George W. Bush could more easily take a look at those things without people believing that he's trying to prove how tough he is. That is, I think he could be more dispassionate from a political standpoint, if you want to look at it from that standpoint, than perhaps someone who had to prove that he or she was tough on crime," Lundgren said.

Blumenthal said the new attorney general should also look into allegations of voting irregularities in Florida.

"The best course for any new attorney general would be to pursue those allegations very, very vigorously, and do it through an agency like the FBI, even though it may not be strictly at this point a criminal investigation, it may not have a criminal predicate. But to pursue any allegations of fraud, wrongdoing relating to the electoral process would make a lot of sense for the attorney general of the United States," he said.

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U.S. Department of Justice

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