Reno's Record

Sometimes just being there assures success. Janet Reno became the nation's second-longest-serving attorney general on Monday, logging in five years and 10 months and coming in behind only William Wirt, who put in 11 years and three months in the administrations of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. "I don't know that she's become the second-longest-serving atorney general because she's been the second most distinguished," says TIME writer Adam Cohen. She's survived "mostly because she has been the beneficiary of the fact that it has been too awkward for Clinton to remove her." Her departure would have set off a series of acrimonious congressional hearings, at her successor's nomination proceedings, over some of the administration's alleged campaign improprieties. "It is an odd form of job security," says Cohen.

Indeed, her career at the Justice Department, he says, has been marked by a number of low points, "not the least of which were the Waco tragedy and her repeated indecisions over appointing independent counsels to investigate Clinton campaign finances." Ironically, though, Reno will go down in history as the attorney general who actually approved the appointment of more independent counsels than any other: seven, to investigate various administration figures. Moreover, one of those independent counsels, Kenneth Starr, has become the first one to trigger the impeachment trial of a president. Beat that, William Wirt.