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WASHINGTON -- Harvey Pitt wasn't U.S. President George W. Bush's first choice to be the top U.S. securities cop.

He wasn't the second, third or fourth pick, either.

He was candidate No. 5.

And right about now, the 57-year-old chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is probably wishing he'd never taken the job nobody else wanted.

Calls for Mr. Pitt's resignation reached a fever pitch last week, as Democrat leaders in the U.S. Congress called on Mr. Bush to fire him for a "growing number of . . . inappropriate or improper actions."

Critics fault the onetime securities lawyer for everything from cozying up to former clients, failing to crack down hard enough on corporate corruption and, most recently, for bowing to White House pressure in choosing a candidate to head up a new watchdog agency for the accounting industry.

In Mr. Pitt, the Democrats have found a scapegoat for the string of corruption scandals, as well as a means of getting the Bush administration's handling of the economy on the agenda for next month's pivotal congressional elections.

Mr. Pitt is defiant and unrepentant, vowing that his tenure at the SEC will last longer than the attention span of his detractors.

"Long after [the November congressional election] is over and they go on to the next set of issues, I'm still going to be cleaning up this mess," he told The Wall Street Journal.

Displaying his characteristic blunt public relations style, he also accused his detractors of not knowing "what they're talking about."

And so far, Mr. Bush, who has yet to shuffle any of his top officials, is standing firm behind the top U.S. securities watchdog.

No matter how bad it gets for Mr. Pitt, congressional Republicans and the Bush administration are likely to stick with him because firing him could prove even more damaging, analysts said.

"In the short run, the Republicans and Harvey Pitt are locked in an embrace of necessity," said John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia University in New York.

"Firing him would be a tacit admission of failure."

Worse still, with Democrats in control of the Senate, Mr. Pitt's foes would quickly turn the search for a successor into an indictment of the Bush administration's handling of the corporate scandals, Prof. Coffee suggested.

"It would be a show trial," he added, noting that the Senate must approve all nominees for the SEC.

The latest controversy haunting Mr. Pitt involves his handling of a job search to find the first head of a newly created accounting watchdog -- a response to Arthur Andersen's botched Enron Corp. audit work. Mr. Pitt initially floated the name of John Biggs, chairman of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF) -- the powerful college professors' pension fund -- and a popular choice among major investors.

But Mr. Pitt's support appeared to waver after Michael Oxley, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives financial services committee, and some White House officials objected to Mr. Biggs' candidacy.

Some accounting industry officials have expressed concern that Mr. Biggs would be too much of an activist and not enough of an advocate.

Mr. Pitt said he just hasn't made up his mind yet.

Mr. Pitt has also been faulted for repeatedly meeting privately with officials of companies targeted by SEC investigations -- sometimes over the objections of his own staff.

The latest controversial incident involved a meeting with Henry Paulson, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs & Co., which is being probed for biased investment research.

Mr. Pitt, whose former client list included a who's who of brokers and accountants, has angrily dismissed all of those allegations.

"There is no legitimate concern about any of the meetings I have had," Mr. Pitt told the Journal during a stopover in Brussels. "I'm not as stupid as I look."

More broadly, critics have complained that Mr. Pitt has seemed to embrace a philosophy of deregulation at a time when the investing public is craving more regulation. For example, he was slow to endorse a post-Enron overhaul of U.S. securities laws, coming on board only after it became clear that Congress was ready to vote for tough reforms.

"He should have resigned the moment the accounting scandals broke," said Lawrence Mitchell, a law professor at George Washington University and author of Corporate Irresponsibility: America's Newest Export. "That was his duty to the country."

Prof. Mitchell complained that Mr. Pitt can't be trusted to do what's right for investors as the SEC embarks on the most significant overhaul of securities regulation since the 1930s, because he worked for the industry and almost certainly will work for the industry again when he leaves the commission.

"Why would he create stringent laws that are going to become problems for his future clients?" he asked.

"The intent of Congress was to overhaul the rules of the game. With Mr. Pitt's conflicts, I don't see how he can be trusted."

Before becoming a top securities lawyer, Mr. Pitt earned his stripes as one of the youngest general counsels at the SEC, serving there from 1975 to 1978.

His legal clients have included Garth Drabinsky, the Canadian co-founder of Livent Inc., and disgraced Wall Street deal maker Ivan Boesky.

Prof. Coffee, however, said it isn't so much Mr. Pitt's integrity that is the problem, but his bumbling public performance.

"He lacks an adept touch at public relations," he said. "He's his own worst enemy."