For anyone who has worked as a professional reporter the ultimate attribute so many hope to achieve is the ability to develop a critical eye toward the present and future and shift gears when needed.

The one element that prevents so many from achieving success in reporting is intransigence.  Aided frequently by pressure, sometimes through a stubborn instinct, other times through refusal to apply the hard work and corresponding judgment to follow through, reporters will fail to observe an important trend.  

Walter Cronkite was someone who began reporting as a teen and was delighted to be in journalism.  This showed when he demonstrated a refreshingly youthful buoyancy over a positive achievement such as America placing astronauts on the moon.

On the sober front of international relations, Cronkite shook the collective collar of middle class America, those regulars who watched his network news broadcasts, when he asserted that to look for victory in the morass of the Vietnam War quagmire was to seek the impossible.  

Here we go...... It's Watergate all over again with the Executive Privilege.  

Just for fun, let's assume for a moment that Cheney is called as a witness in Libby's court case. It would certainly make sense but what would it all mean? Mind you this isn't worth a hoot if a real news source doesn't confirm it, but here goes anyway.

In 1974, Nixon disputed everything John Dean said until Alexander Butterfield testified that all conversations in the Oval Office were taped.  Archibald Cox subpoenaed the tapes, but Nixon refused to turn them over, citing "executive privilege."  When Cox refused to drop the subppoena, Nixon asked then Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox.  He refused, and resigned.  Then Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned.  Bork was Solicitor General at the time, and he fired Cox.  (Which, of course, led to the "borking" of Bork as Supreme Court nominee in 1987.)

Leon Jaworski was then appointed special prosecutor, but he pursued the tapes all the way to the Supreme Court.

Here we go...Taking a page from the Nixon playbook, Cheney and Libby allegedly blocked information from the Senate Intelligence Committee in an election year, citing "executive privilege."

The reason the Watergate burglars broke into Democratic National Headquarters in 1972 was that Nixon was paranoid about losing the election to McGovern, the anti-war candidate.  (Nixon was worried that DNC chairman Larry O'Brien had dirt on Nixon's ties to organized crime and gambling in Havana in the 1950s, as well as his role in planning the Bay of Pigs invasion while he was VP under Eisenhower.)

In the end, Nixon won by a landslide in 1972, so the break-in was hardly worth the risk.  What ultimately brought down his administration was not the sloppy break-in by a few second-rate crooks, but rather the cover-up and obstruction of justice by Nixon and his inner circle.

Now the current White Hoouse thinks they can one-up the Nixon boondoggle:

As Harry Truman once said, "The only thing new is the history we haven't yet read."  This aphorism is particularly apt in the wake of the Scooter Libby grand jury indictment and ongoing investigation into the Valerie Plame leak.

Turn back the clock to 1973 and observe the strategy at the Nixon White House during the ongoing Watergate investigations.  Nixon strategists such as H.R. Haldeman and Charles Colson sought out John Dean, the 31-year-old White House counsel, as a convenient sacrificial lamb.  The strategy was to blame the whole sordid Watergate mess on Dean and get back to business.  Dean refused to play the role of patsy and the rest is history as the Nixon Administration went down in flames and the first presidential resignation in American history occurred the following year.