Senator Frist, the Republican leader, was yesterday calling Senator Feingold’s bluff, pressing for a full Senate vote on a resolution introduced by the Badger State Democrat that would censure President Bush for warrantless wiretapping of conversations between foreign terrorists and Americans. That would put Democrats on record about how strongly they oppose the wiretaps, which polls show a majority of Americans support. It would make the Democrats look weak on national security just at a moment when the Democrats had succeeded in using the Dubai issue to, for once, appear more hawkish than Mr. Bush on the war on terrorism.

The Democrats were doing what they could last night to avoid such a vote, and they hardly seemed to be rallying around the Badger State Democrat’s proposal. Another censure resolution introduced in the House by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan focuses not on the wiretapping but on Abu Ghraib and intelligence on Iraq. Mr. Conyers has amassed only 15 other congressmen as co-sponsors of that resolution, including that notorious crackpot Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and, sadly, New York City’s own extremist and out-of-touch Jerrold Nadler, Major Owens, Charles Rangel, and Carolyn Maloney. That Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney, who represent Manhattan, which was attacked on September 11, 2001, would fall for this sort of stunt is particularly disappointing.

Back in 1999 when the Senate considered convicting President Clinton on articles of impeachment, there were those who argued for a censure as a substitute. Wiser minds rejected the idea. “Censure is about getting political cover,” Senator Gramm of Texas told “Meet the Press”at the time. “The problem is, this covering-your-fanny approach has constitutional costs. Because if we do censure the president, we establish a precedent that when a future Harry Truman fires a future General MacArthur, then Congress is going to come in, and with a lower threshold, censure the president. When a future Supreme Court rules to strike down the Religious Freedom Act, I can see us using this as a precedent, condemning, in this case, censuring the Supreme Court. And I think we start to infringe on the separation of powers. I think we weaken our government and I understand the need for people politically to want to get political cover, but I think the constitutional cost is too big. I am adamantly opposed to censure, and I intend to fight it hard.”

Senator Gramm had it right. Congress has a lot of genuine power. It could, if it wanted to, immediately cut off funding for the troops in Iraq or funding for wiretapping by the National Security Agency. A vote on funding for the troops in Iraq – remember the $87 billion? – helped lose Senator Kerry a presidential election in 2004. But the Democrats don’t have the votes or the political support in the country to do that, so they hide behind “censure” as a way of trying to have it both ways – covering their fannies, as Mr. Gramm put it so memorably. It may be that Mr. Nadler or Ms. Maloney think they have such safe districts that they can get away with these shenanigans. But the Badger State Democrat’s introduction of this censure resolution is a sure sign he knows he has no real chance of winning the White House in 2008. Why would he undermine the powers of the office he would seek?