Early signs do not look promising.

Hearings on the nomination of Eric Holder, Obama's choice for attorney general, are scheduled to get under way this week. Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) already has given clear signals that they will be contentious and partisan.

It goes without saying that the Justice Department needs a competent, independent leader. Under both John Ashcroft and Alberto R. Gonzales, the department Americans trust to uphold the law instead was used to carry out a political agenda. Lawyers were fired for refusing to toe the party line, memos were written to explain away the president's abuses of power, and job applicants were judged not by their qualifications, but by their political affiliations.

Even the current attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey, who was brought in to clean up after Gonzales' disastrous tenure, has refused to say outright that waterboarding is torture.

Holder is by all accounts well-qualified for just about any job in government, and he is especially suited for this one. His resume is superb, and he has worked with people on both sides of the political aisle.

Ronald Reagan appointed Holder to serve as a Superior Court judge for the District of Columbia, and he later served as a U.S. attorney and a deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton. Holder has received plaudits from Republicans and Democrats alike, and even his critics concede that his ethics are unimpeachable.

But now some Republican strategists are pushing for a drawn-out hearing process, forcing the next president to use time and energy defending the nomination. Specter recently took to the floor of the Senate to attack Holder before the hearings had even started, offering a baffling comparison of Holder and Gonzales.

By whipping up accusations that Holder is not "independent" enough, Republican activists are hoping to delay, but not derail, Holder's confirmation. In other words, the gears of power are moving to make the confirmation battle as messy as possible, all in the interest of "taking the incoming president down a peg," as the Boston Globe put it recently.

The Senate should by all means exercise its constitutional right to review presidential appointments. But it should use its energy to pursue legitimate concerns about nominees who are unqualified, unethical, or obviously unwilling to put the rule of law above their own ideology. Creating concern where there is none, purely for the sake of prolonging a confirmation battle, is a perversion of our system of checks and balances.

Independence is a crucial attribute in an attorney general, and it is one that Holder has without question; to argue otherwise is pure invention. He repeatedly has shown himself willing to be tough on politicians from his own party.

In 1994, Holder's indictment of Democrat Dan Rostenkowski forced the congressman to resign and gave Republicans a poster child for Democratic corruption. A few years later, Holder backed Ken Starr's request to expand his Monica Lewinsky investigation.

No doubt Specter is under immense pressure from outside groups and his own party to lead the attack on Holder. But it's shameful to tarnish the reputation of a dedicated public servant in the name of party loyalty. Important issues are afoot that demand hard work and serious debate in the Senate, and those should be the focus in coming weeks.

This would be an excellent time for Specter to display his own independence and help guide this nomination along a path defined by principles, not politics.