If McCain is elected, Lindsey Graham tops his short list for possible Attorney Generals (I actually suspect that he is the only person on that list).

Which makes their closeness all the more worrying:

McCain and Graham aren’t just friends. They’re inseparable, so much so that colleagues, staffers and journalists have begun making cracks about the relationship between the freshman senator from South Carolina and the man who would be president.

Some call Graham a lapdog. Others say he acts as though he’s one of McCain’s legislative aides. One Senate aide, who called Graham and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) “Pips” to McCain’s Gladys Knight, said that Graham “fawns over McCain like there’s no tomorrow.” In the run-up to this week’s hearings for Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, The Washington Post’s Tom Ricks said Graham “sometimes seems like McCain’s ‘Mini-Me.’”

“I think it’s almost a father-son relationship,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), a friend of both senators and another member of their Senate clique. “I think Lindsey looks to [McCain] and relies on him. But I think John draws on Lindsey’s energy and relies on him for a laugh.”

McCain spokeswoman Melissa Shuffield said the two senators “have the kind of friendship that will outlast their political careers.”

The two have grown so close that a Fox News anchor felt compelled to ask Graham last week if he might be McCain’s running mate — a suggestion Graham laughed off by saying that McCain “doesn’t have anything I want or need.”

That’s not exactly true. As Graham himself admits, his close relationship with McCain affords him opportunities and access that most neophyte senators don’t usually enjoy — as long as he’s willing to put up with the abuse that goes along with it all.

If the Bush-Alberto Gonzales debacle has taught us anything, it is that an attorney general who fawns over the president he serves will be less interested in serving justice than protecting his political ally.