We're for Alan Mulally. Boeing directors need look no further for a new chief executive officer than its Commercial Airplanes division here in Seattle.

That is its core business, and the man who leads it knows it better than any other.

Mulally has worked on every commercial jet airliner Boeing has developed and several it didn't, including the Sonic Cruiser and the Supersonic Transport. He runs Commercial Airplanes now, and successfully. Of all the candidates for Boeing CEO, he is clearly the No. 1 choice inside the company.

Business leaders have various strengths. Some are unusually adept at reading numbers. Some, like ousted CEO Harry Stonecipher, are known for being blunt and tough. Mulally is a leader of people — a team builder, an inspirer, a charmer. He's the engineer who could have been an evangelist.

There is something relentlessly American about him, a hands-on, can-do optimism. He's just the man to take on Airbus Industrie and maneuver it into a corner.

Mulally is 59, and some catty commentators are saying he's too old. That's an uneducated thing to say of a former semi-pro tennis player who was called "boyish" until he was past 50. We're not worried about his stamina.

Some engineers are worried that this company, the most successful manufacturer to be founded in the state of Washington, may be compromising its technical leadership in order to meet short-term earnings goals. Whether or not they are right, America would feel safer on that score if Boeing's CEO were an engineer. Mulally is, and several of his rivals are not.

He is also heritage Boeing, not McDonnell Douglas (or General Electric), and that counts for a lot, especially right now.

That brings up another matter: Boeing's move to Chicago has not been a propitious thing. In three years, the company has lost one CFO and two CEOs, none of them under the best of circumstances.

The Windy City is a good town, and perhaps the next CEO will do fine there, but the Boeing directors might be reminded that the city where Boeing was born and raised is perhaps a better fit. If the company needs a fresh start, it is welcome to make one here.

And we have just the guy.