For Schroeder, Life After Politics Is A Gas.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(EDITORIALS)(Editorial)

Politics: Imagine if George Bush went to work at Halliburton -- or Exxon Mobil or Chevron -- the day after he left the White House in 2009. What outrage and condemnation that would create among the world's press?

But let former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder go to work for Russian energy company Gazprom three weeks after leaving office and the press in this country hardly peeps.

Maybe it's an unfair comparison. After all, it's just the former chancellor of Germany. He's not as newsworthy here as the president of the United States. Perhaps we shouldn't expect too much.

But we should expect something.

The Washington Post editorialized against Schroeder's move, calling it a "Sellout" in the headline. But the mainstream media largely yawned. Too busy getting worked up over the next political bludgeon it would use against the Bush administration.

Or making sure that the public knows that Jack Abramoff, who has been busy this week pleading guilty to felonious corruption, was, in the carefully selected words of The New York Times, "a once prominent Republican lobbyist."

While we appreciate the Post's indignation, Schroeder is probably more of a cynical opportunist, a shameless operator, than a sellout. The former chancellor became chairman of the North European Gas Pipeline -- a consortium that's 51% owned by Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled energy company -- after being one of its primary supporters in government. It would be hard to argue he wasn't setting himself up for a lavish post-chancellorship retirement.