The Legislature in Albany is due to decide today on the next state comptroller. It may be too soon — though the betting is on an assemblyman of Nassau County, Thomas DiNapoli — to predict the outcome with certainty. But it’s not too soon to say that it has been a memorable political drama, one that has seen one of the most ambitious governors in the history of the state misjudge his first big political problem and get out-maneuvered by the leader of the Assembly he has vowed to clean up. Last night we phoned an acquaintance in the Assembly, who agreed the governor had made a strategic miscalculation in trying to usurp the Legislature’s constitutional authority. But he was not so sure that losing the showdown with Speaker Silver would be the worst thing for Governor Spitzer. Instead he characterized the likely outcome for the governor as a “Pyrrhic defeat.”

Certainly one cannot say that Mr. Spitzer is a quitter. The letter he circulated to legislators yesterday was both impassioned and eloquent. He insisted that the panel of ex-comptrollers who advanced the three names Mr. Spitzer wanted the Assembly to choose from was convened “not because the members of the Legislature aren’t honorable, dedicated or capable.” He suggested that, “in the face of scandals,” he and the legislators understood the “need to act differently to restore people’s confidence in government.” But then he spoke of their having developed “a new process for choosing a successor” to the disgraced Alan Hevesi “that relied on the advice and counsel of independent experts.”

That’s where the governor got ahead of himself. The fact is that it’s hard to talk about the integrity of developing a “new process” when the old process is called a constitution. Mr. Silver grasped the point instinctively. He no doubt will pay his own price, however, because no matter whom he backs, the losing aspirants from the Assembly ranks are going to be disappointed. By turning to the county leaders to help round up support for Mr. DiNapoli, the speaker has himself tinkered with the Legislature’s constitutional prerogatives, though not seriously (some of the county leaders, after all, are themselves in the Legislature). For Mr. Silver to be completely vindicated, the new comptroller, whoever it is, will need to do a memorably good job. Particularly in the wake of the scandal that brought down Mr. Hevesi, the question of the integrity of the next comptroller, whoever it is, will be paramount.

And there are big issues in the air, including the scandal of pay to play. Mr. Hevesi’s worst offenses, in our oft-stated view, had to do with his handing out hugely lucrative legal assignments to law firms whose members had helped finance his campaigns. It wouldn’t be the first time that the bigger scandal was not what was illegal but what was legal. One of the Assembly members who had been considered for comptroller, Richard Brodsky, specifically vowed to issue, on his first day in the job, a procurement order that would bar those who do business with the pension fund or the comptroller’s office from contributing to the comptroller’s race. Then there is the question of our pension schemes and the need to move to structures that don’t leave the taxpayers facing such open-ended and expensive obligations. Here lies an opportunity not only for the new comptroller but for both the Legislature and the executive. If Mr. Spitzer fails to get one of his choices for comptroller, the way to ensure that his defeat is Pyrrhic is to go immediately on the offense on these larger questions. In that fight, he won’t be treading on the Legislature’s constitutional prerogatives.