Governor Spitzer is being smart by resisting the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate his misuse of the state police as part of a plan to smear a political opponent, the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno. Such special prosecutors, whether Lawrence Walsh in Iran Contra or Kenneth Starr in Whitewater or Patrick Fitzgerald in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak case, inevitably find themselves, no matter how well-intentioned and professional they are, unable to resist the temptations of a nigh-limitless power against a single target. They can be counted on to keep going until they have found a crime, often picayune or far afield compared to what they originally set out to investigate. A special prosecutor is the last thing New York’s already dysfunctional government needs.

We’re not suggesting any existing authority should back off. But for Mr. Spitzer himself, the way for him to save his governorship is to focus the policy fight. He talked about preventing tax increases. The big test of his integrity will be whether he delivers on that. He talked about accountability in education. It will thus become a test of his word. We wish the Senate luck in its fight with Mr. Spitzer over Mr. Bruno’s use of government transport, but what point is the fight with Mr. Spitzer if the Senate is going to approve a Democrat-sponsored bill changing the state’s approach to welfare policy so as to aim at placing more welfare recipients into jobs with “sustainable wages” — defined as 185%, or even 285% the federal poverty level.

“Plenty of working stiffs get by on less,” William Hammond wrote yesterday in the Daily News. “Why should they pay taxes so someone on the dole can hold out for a better job than they have?” Mr. Hammond quotes Mayor Bloomberg’s Human Resources Administration Commissioner, Robert Doar, as saying, “You have to start sometimes with a lower-wage job to get a higher-wage job.” He also quotes Ronald Haskins of the center-left Brookings Institution as criticizing the bill. Our Jacob Gershman has more about the issue on today’s front page. Mr. Hammond points out that the Senate approved the bill unanimously, without even a hearing.

Now here is an opportunity for the governor that would do more to save his reputation than all meae culpae he could ever issue in the New York Times over his use or misuse of the State Police, serious though that may be. The governor has an opportunity to veto the welfare fiasco before a deadline of tonight at midnight. With a stroke of a pen, he could reassert his executive authority and save New York taxpayers from a law that litigious welfare advocates will no doubt seize on to try to take apart the city’s enormously successful workfare programs, which have dramatically reduced the welfare rolls. He may have his veto overridden, but suddenly he would be looking at the legislature from the moral high ground.