Editorials

The surviving Watergate henchmen must feel cheated. Even Richard Nixon himself, were he still alive, would stamp his feet at the double standard of what transpired last week.

One president, Nixon, em-broiled in controversy, watched loyal staffers spill their guts about unlawful eavesdropping before congressional committees. Some went to prison. Others felt the cleansing rush of coming clean from the lies and deceptions.

Another president, George W. Bush, is caught in an equally damning set of events. His government operated outside the bounds of the special court created by Congress to oversee wiretapping of domestic suspects. (One created, by the way, in the wake of Nixon's scandals.)

Despite Bush's behavior, majorities in the Senate and the House offered the president a virtual white-out for his legal missteps in domestic spying. The updated spying law papers over the White House's ignoring of criminal mandates and even grants legal immunity to the telecom companies who assisted the administration.

In another example, a former staffer heavily involved in a series of inappropriate actions from his position of power, Karl Rove, blithely ignored a subpoena to testify before the Congress last week.

Did we mention that the current Republican president achieved all this with the help of Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate?

Conventional wisdom says the Democrats are merely biding their time, waiting until a fellow party member is in the White House and their majorities in the House and Senate are more formidable. All of which might happen this November.

Yet with a week like that one where a president gets away with the sort of behavior that drove Nixon into seclusion and sent his aides to the shadows, voters are right to wonder if Democrats know how to handle the majority.