Starting this week and running through January, many newspapers will run glowing profiles of the attorneys general elected a year ago. 

How do I know in advance that the profiles will be glowing?   The answer is simple.   After a year, the profiles are always glowing.  These stories will all say that in just one short year, the dozen new attorneys general elected in 2006 have transformed themselves from fast talking, over promising, self indulgent political hacks to thoughtful law enforcement officers.  The profiles will marvel that the liberals are more conservative and the conservatives are more liberal.   All will be praised for their professionalism.  All will speculate about higher offices.

I suppose that I could perpetrate the myth and take some personal credit (I was a part of the faculty that ran the New Attorney General Training carried out by the National Association of Attorneys General) but the older I get the more truthful I become, so I will take a pass.  What is true is that the new attorneys general, like their predecessors, have learned to do their jobs and are doing it well.  The praise that they get this first year should make their hearts grow warm.   They should frame these profiles (I didn’t and now it has faded while sitting in a box in the old chicken barn I use for storage.) and save them for their grandkids.

Above all, however, they should not believe them.