EDITORIAL - Washington is buzzing in anticipation of potential indictments from the Special Prosecutor either today or tomorrow. The excitement on the left is bubbling over in the hope that finally the Bush administration will be exposed as the criminals and liars they have always presumed them to be.

There is no question that the White House should be on edge before Fitzgerald lays down the law. However, because of the ratcheting up of the hype and expectations by the media there is plenty of room for some major disappointment on the left.

The way things stand right now, anything less than an indictment of Rove will be, in political terms, a victory for the White House. Of course, the indictment of the Vice President's Chief of Staff is not on its surface a minor issue. But because almost no one outside of Washington has ever heard of Scooter Libby (coupled with the massive expectations for much, much, more) indictments of Libby and one or two other smaller players from the Vice President's office won't be the Bush killing moment so many are hoping for.

On the other hand if Rove is indicted, along with a host of others, the President is going to have a problem he is going to have to deal with. It won't be the Watergate redux that so many in the media and on the left are pining for, but it would be foolish for Republicans to spin this as anything but bad news. If Rove gets indicted you can almost guarantee that the Miers nomination will be withdrawn (which would be a big plus for the President).

On the extremes of what Fitzgerald could do, no indictments at all will cause all of this frenzy and speculation to backfire utterly on the MSM and will be a huge boost to the President's climbing out of his current hole. And of course if the left-wing nirvana scenario comes down and somehow Joe Wilson is right and Cheney is indicted along with Rove, Libby, et al, the Bush administration is going to think the last 6 weeks weren't that bad in retrospect.