Should the fight over subpoenas in the U.S. attorney imbroglio climax with some Bush administration officials being held in contempt of Congress, that would simply be putting a legal stamp on what has so clearly become true on the political front: The people at each end of Pennsylvania Avenue now hold one another in deep contempt.

Even some of President Bush’s fellow Republican friends seem fed up with White House haughtiness as they tiptoe into line with the Democrats, who are aiming to force top presidential adviser Karl Rove and others to testify under oath about their role in the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors since the midterm election. If subpoenas are issued and neither side blinks, the dispute could be headed to the federal courthouse at the foot of Capitol Hill, where the House or Senate are allowed to send their contempt-of-Congress citations for prosecution; people convicted of refusing to heed a congressional subpoena may be sent to prison for as long as a year.

How could the president’s use of his own power to appoint U.S. Attorneys mushroom into such a spectacle engulfing all three branches of government? The answer is that Bush and his Democratic foes have been spoiling for a really big fight ever since Republicans lost control of Congress in the midterm election. And both sides played a strong role in drawing attention to this debate.

You even have to wonder whether the White House deliberately provoked the face-off, either to lay down its marker against the new Democratic Congress or to perpetuate a story that diverts attention from the bad news of the Iraq War. After all, it was not the Democrats who finally managed to make the prosecutor firings front-page news, despite trying to do so for weeks.

The fired U.S. attorneys became a hot national story two weeks ago because of quotes in news reports from a Republican state leader and a White House spokesperson. Although the prosecutors themselves and Capitol Hill Democrats had long been trying to stoke interest in the story, it was the chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, Allen Weh, who got the job done — by telling McClatchy newspapers about a talk he had with Rove about David C. Iglesias, the dismissed U.S. attorney in Albuquerque. Weh said that in 2005 he complained about the pace of Iglesias’ probe into alleged corruption involving a local Democrat. “He’s gone,” Weh quoted Rove as saying. And Iglesias was in fact one of the eight forced out last fall.

If not for the surprising White House response to the McClatchy report, even Weh’s retelling of Rove’s provocative quote might not have been enough to put this story on the radar screen. But presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino quickly confirmed for McClatchy that Rove had indeed been involved in discussions with the Justice Department about firing U.S. attorneys. This marked the first time in the brewing scandal that anyone — let alone a mouthpiece for the Bush administration itself — had directly connected the White House to a dispute that had so far centered on the Justice Department. Focusing on Rove, always a lightning rod for the news media, ensured that the story would reach higher altitude, and it quickly did.

Whether the roles of the White House and the GOP official were deliberate or politically sloppy, they had the effect of provoking the political equivalent of World Wrestling Entertainment’s “Smackdown,” except that in Washington’s arena the fighting is real, not fake.

The sudden explosion of interest in the firings was helpful to the White House in at least one important way: It stepped on last week’s coverage of the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, which loomed as an occasion for even more national focus on the violence there — something the Bush camp surely did not welcome.

For their part, congressional Democratic leaders were more than willing to engage the White House in a battle over its handling of the prosecutors. For the first 10 weeks of their time in power, they had been trying to start some big public fight. And the Democrats, too, might also not mind a shift of the public’s eye away from Iraq, because their inability to win a vote against Bush’s war strategy is increasingly aggravating their base of liberal voters.

By getting tough on the White House for a domestic issue that allows Congress more oversight powers than in making war, the Democrats seized a chance to please that base — especially with Rove at center stage. A high-stakes confrontation targeting Bush’s closest adviser, a political devil to many liberals, helps Democratic leaders look more effective to their partisan backers.

This battle also serves the president’s interest in standing tough for the benefit of his most ardent supporters, who number about one-third of the country, according to polls.

With both sides using the issue to ignite their core supporters, there seems little chance for finding the common ground that middle-of-the-road voters want. Once again, civility is likely to give way to the politics of contempt.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.