Beyond the Dome

This could come back to haunt him someday, but Barack Obama says he has no problem with the House's efforts to get a federal judge to force two former White House officials to comply with subpoenas to testify about the Bush administration's firings of nine U.S. attorneys.

As a quick refresher, former White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers declined to testify about the firings before the House Judiciary Committee last year even after they were issued subpoenas. They cited executive privilege, and President Bush took the position that his current and former aides can never be compelled to testify before Congress.

In February, the House voted to hold Bolten and Miers in contempt of Congress, but Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey refused to submit the contempt citation to a grand jury. So the House filed a lawsuit in federal court to force Bolten and Miers to comply with the subpoenas.

It's one of the many power struggles Bush has waged against Congress' attempts to conduct oversight of his administration, and either Obama or John McCain will be closely watched to see if they have anything close to the expansive views of executive privilege that Bush has had. So here's what Obama said about the dispute this afternoon at a press conference in Jacksonville, Fla.:

"I think that nobody is above the law. If there are specific assertions of executive privilege, then, you know, those can be examined. But I think this notion, this blanket notion that you can't subpoena White House aides, where there's evidence of genuine wrongdoing, I think is completely misguided.

"You know, as I recall, Richard Nixon mounted similar arguments. That's not how we operate. We're a nation of laws and not men and women. So, you know -- and my -- that's a precedent I don't mind living with as president of the United States."

If he does become president and Congress returns to Republican control, of course, that is exactly the kind of precedent Obama will have to live with. But Bush's constant power struggles with Congress have guaranteed that Obama and McCain will be asked these questions -- exactly the kinds of questions Bush was rarely, if ever, asked eight years ago.