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One of the great scandals of the last eight years is how successful the Bush Administration has been at avoiding appropriate accountability and oversight. Whatever else one thinks of Don Rumsfeld, he at least (appropriately) offered to resign -- twice -- after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The president, of course, declined to accept, but such displays of honor and acceptance of responsibility have been rare during this presidency.

Still, I can't help but get a bad feeling about this:

It remains one of those hidden secrets in Washington that a Democratic Justice Department is going to be very interested in figuring out whether there's a case to be made that senior Bush Administration officials were guilty of war crimes. Stories like these from ABC News -- Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation' -- will be as relevant a year from now as they are right now, perhaps even more so.

Here's my advice to any Democratic president who might take office: Don't.

It'll look political, even if it's not -- but especially if it is. It'll pave the way for revenge prosecutions the next time a Republican takes office, and it's not hard to see how an Oliver North-type defense -- I was just trying to defend my country your honor -- might backfire in a big way on Democrats. It'll be divisive and suck the air out of any other initiative a Democratic president might want to pursue.

And it's not like war-weary Americans are really going to have the stomach for this kind of thing, either.

Better to publicize every possible drop of information about the Bush Administration's decision-making process and let the public draw its own conclusions. If there's a belief that war crimes laws were intentionally violated -- I'm not sure that creating legal justifications to circumvent the law counts -- create an independent, bipartisan commission to decide on charges, with a requirement of unanimity (or near-unanimity) to bring an indictment. But no good can come of Democrats prosecuting Republicans on this kind of issue, and the candidates should say so.