Rumsfeld Out

The election fallout has already begun. Donald Rumsfeld has been replaced as Secretary of Defense.

This isn't surprising. President Bush is going to have to do some very heavy deal making if he's to keep the war effort going in the face of a hostile congress and press, and Rumsfeld, who I think did a very good job, is too much of a liability. Not only is he hated by the left for unabashedly supporting the war effort, but many at the Pentagon despise him as well for his insistence on fundamental defence reforms that respect no one's sacred cow. In such a situation it was hard enough to keep him in office even with a Republicans Congress, but now that the Democrats are in charge, he'd have all the life expectancy of a tethered duck in a shooting gallery.