Since hurricane references are in vogue these days I'll use one for the Libby indictment: it's Wilma, not Katrina. I mean two things by that: first, that it could have been a lot worse. Fitzgerald apparently didn't have or couldn't prove a conspiracy charge and he couldn't indict on either of the main underlying laws of the case. An indictment (albeit a solid five-count one at that) of a single player in the Bush administration who is not well known to the public will not do nearly as much lasting damage to the Bush presidency as either mulitple indictments or the indictment of Rove would have done.

The second reason the Libby affair looks to me like hurricane Wilma is because if the Libby indictment is, in fact, all that ends up coming of Fitzgerald's probe, it's going to hit and be gone as a media event outside the beltway. The frenzy will continue through the weekend and the Sunday shows tomorrow,  but the Libby story won't be packing nearly the same punch on Monday or Tuesday morning when America wakes up to find that President Bush has nominated someone new to the Supreme Court.

I'm under no illusions that the mainstream media (especially those in Washington who live and breathe this stuff every day) won't try to keep the Libby story as big as possible for as long as possible.  But unless there is damaging new information that comes out or until such time as there is a trial with some very high profile witnesses, if the White House is smart and stays on the offensive with a SCOTUS appointment and big policy announcements, the Libby affair will go from being a Category 3 storm back to a tropical depression pretty darn fast in the eyes of the public.