With all the drama over the resignation of Attorney General Gonzales the politician we’re watching is Senator Clinton. She has several times in the past shown the savvy to hang back from agitation in the Congress to restrict the power of the presidency. Our reaction has been to remark that what separates her from Senator Schumer and her colleagues on the Hill is that she actually has a shot at occupying the office her colleagues are trying to traduce. The next test of whether she has the mettle for the presidency will be whether she defends the principle that the president be free to appoint and dismiss the prosecutors who act for the branch the president heads. Efforts of the democrats in the Congress to play politics by fettering the president’s sway in the Justice department will do little more than restrict the room to maneuver of any democratic president who may accede after Mr. Bush.

The drama is more acute because of the emerging fight over whether there should be a special counsel appointed in the wake of General Gonzales’s resignation. The idea is to investigate not only what role politics played in the firing of United States attorneys but to probe whether General Gonzales committed perjury. Better than any politician in the country, Mrs. Clinton is in a position to understand the danger inherent in a prosecutor assigned, without limit, to target a single individual or small group of them. She watched her husband’s presidency nearly destroyed when Judge Starr, an individual of sterling character, found the temptations of unfettered power impossible to resist. Her interest lies against unleashing a new special counsel on the presidency or an executive branch constituent.

So ironically the Gonzales case shapes up as a test of whether Mr. Bush’s leading opponent is made of presidential timber. Not to mention a test of Mr. Bush himself. He faltered in the Valerie Plame case, permitting the appointment of a special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, who found the temptations of unchecked power too much to resist and launched an investigation even after the Justice department learned the identity of the leaker at the heart of the case. The cry among Mr. Bush’s friends will be “Remember Richardson.” It was in a pact to gain confirmation of Elliot Richardson that President Nixon agreed to name a special prosecutor, Professor Cox, unleashing the maelstrom that doomed his presidency. Mr. Bush’s best move is to name the man or woman he wants and, if his nominee doesn’t get through, make do with an acting attorney general for the duration of his mandate.