The mainstream Democratic position -- and my position -- on the NSA scandal is that wiretapping people reasonably suspected of terrorism is a good thing, but that (1) There needs to be oversight so that the President isn't misusing his power and (2) Bush broke the law in not going through the super-easy FISA court that can even give a retroactive warrant. So if one of our readers happens to be charged with brewing up the official list of Democratic talking points, let me ask you to make some explicit or implicit mention of Watergate. I'm guessing that "We want Bush to wiretap terrorists too -- we just want somebody to make sure he isn't bugging our headquarters" will seem reasonable to ordinary folks. After all, a recent and reviled Republican president did try something like that. It allows us to segue into how easy we made the oversight procedures and how Bush didn't follow them anyway, and it would do wonders in clearing up an issue where confusion (as exemplified in the awful poll question from a week ago) is rampant. It also sets us up pretty nicely in case he did send the spies to snoop on some Democrats.
