By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
WASHINGTON — In this town of ego-excess, where power is the true currency, not money, its tough to be number one — even if you think you are.

GQ magazine has weighed in with the “The 50 Most Powerful People in D.C.” Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. is ranked 13 and FBI Director Robert Mueller III gets the number 19 spot.  Sorry,  Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano didn’t make the cut.

Had J. Edgar Hoover been around, we wonder where he would have ranked. By the way, number one person was Rahm Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff. We assume the president wasn’t in the running.

Here’s what the magazine said about Holder and Mueller.

Holder on the left in Denver at the International Chiefs of Police Conference/ticklethewire.com photo

13. Eric Holder
Attorney General
Is this how an independent-minded attorney general operates? It’s been so long, it’s hard to know. Nonetheless, Holder has pushed back against the wishes of his own team, fighting CIA director Leon Panetta’s attempts to quash the release of the interrogation records and going forward with an investigation, against Obama’s wishes, into the alleged torture that took place during the Bush years. While critics on the left say he’s not going far enough, it’s nice to have a DOJ paying attention to the rule of law again.”

Robert Mueller III in Denver/fbi photo

19. Robert Mueller
Director, FBI
You never really hear much about Mueller. “He stays out of the headlines,” says Michael Chertoff, former secretary of homeland security. Since coming into office seven days before September 11, he has quietly tried to build a more nimble intelligence division, which is now in the process of taking over much of the CIA’s role in detainee interrogations. And after the economic meltdown, he has expanded the bureau’s ability to tackle white-collar crime. “He’s making sure the FBI can retool itself,” says Chertoff.