Echoes of Watergate fill the air

George W. Bush, who reveres power, is losing his own as events in Washington and Iraq, and their public portrayal, slip from his grasp.

His predicaments are rooted less in Lord Acton's adage that "power corrupts" than its corollary that power seduces its holders into overestimating their strength and ignoring its limits.

Bush faces a wide range of potential scandals, which include:

Iraq: the rationale for, cost of, and occupation plans following America's conquest (DOS, DOD, CIA, FBI);
Suppressed Medicare costs (HHS) and bioterrorism studies (DOD);

Insufficient terrorism preparedness and prevention, domestic and international, before and after 9/11 (CIA, FBI, DOD, etc.);

Mounting fiscal deficits and tax relief only for the wealthy (Treasury, OMB); and
Skewed or suppressed scientific research and policies (NIH, HHS, FDA, EPA).

Furthermore, criminal jeopardy may lurk beneath headlines in the "outing" by senior White House officials of a CIA spy (Valerie Plame) married to an Iraq-issue defector (former Ambassador Joseph Wilson III). In that case, any Bush-Ashcroft effort to delay or derail the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, will evoke memories of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" when he fired a prosecutor who was closing in on him.

Nascent scandals also lie in energy policy (including the vice president's list of advisors, on the Supreme Court's current docket), the environment (relaxing arsenic and mercury rules), frayed relations with allies and the United Nations, and on and on . . . In each trouble spot are current and former officials with information and documents that will, almost surely, further tarnish Mr. Bush and his closest advisors.

With so many problems and news from Iraq growing steadily more grisly, Mr. Bush's presidency, like Nixon's, is developing a troubled aura. This will likely beget further difficulties because, as a president's power wanes, the loyalty and obedience of his inner circle and lower-level public employees tends to shrink apace, with each major leak leading to more and larger spurts, like when pressure increases within a frayed hose.

Call it hubris, the blind pride and arrogance that often precipitates a fall from power. Mr. Bush sees himself as Ronald Reagan's heir—the cheerful and Teflon-coated conservative. Instead, he may find deeper and stickier genetic ancestry in the dark and ultimately disgraced Nixon.