Gerard Baker - Times Online - WBLG

Rummy

Well, there you go.  You get distracted for a week by elections and whatnot and your finest, best-honed predictions are reduced to dust.

I suppose dumping Rummy was the only thing to do in the circumstances of such a serious defeat last week, though I do think, as I so presciently wrote, that his departure exposes Bush to new dangers from Democrats.  I simply don't believe the happy talk coming from Dems (and the president) right now about a new era of bipartisan consensus. Politicians don't operate like that.

Rumsfeld

Should Donald Rumsfeld be made to walk the plank if the elections go badly next week for the GOP?  I think as a matter of honour he should have gone by now. Iraq has been disastrously handled and though it may not all be his fault, he's far and away the most obvious candidate to take responsibility.  His removal might also facilitate a change of direction.

Will Bush fire him? That's a very different question.

I doubt it and not just because of what the president said yesterday.  The next year could be a very uncomfortable one politically for the administration. If Republicans take congress next week, they will harry and press the administration to excruciating effect over its conduct of the Iraq war., It could get very ugly. If I were president I'd want a firewall to protect me from the better-targeted flares of the Democrats. Rumsfeld is that firewall. If you let him fall now, the attacks go directly to Bush and Cheney - the last thing the White House wants.  Let Rummy take the heat for as long as he can stand it - and then drop him.

It's a kind of torture, I know.  But if you think about it, that might be rather appropriate. More importantly, as a political survival strategy for the White House it can't be bettered.

The Kerry Flap

Did John Kerry mean to say that anyone who joins the US military is an idiot?  I think simply to ask the question is to answer it.  Kerry is a staggeringly inept politician but even he can't think there are votes to be had in impugning the intellectual ability of the entire armed forces of the United States seven days before an election.  Some of the outrage is clearly manufactured by the outrage-manufacturing industry that has now taken over so much of American political debate, but that's no surprise.

None of this absolves Kerry of the responsibility to apologise, however.  He made an unintentionally ambiguous comment which has been construed by some - not unreasonably - to be offensive.  The morally correct thing to do in those circumstances is to say sorry. The politically imperative thing to do is to say sorry immediately and get the story off the news cycle.  Kerry's failure to do that shows how stubborn and hopeless he is.  I doubt it swings many votes next Tuesday but it's surely the final, very welcome, nail in the coffin of Kerry's presidential ambitions?