Informed Speculation

Academic Elephant certainly thinks so:

Yesterday (Tuesday) may well prove to have been the coup-de-grace for this whole episode. Pushed to respond to the criticism of Mr. Rumsfeld, the President shot back that while he listens to “all voices,” he–rather like Secretary Rumsfeld–has to come to an ultimate decision, which is his right and well as his responsibility. And he has decided that Mr. Rumsfeld stays.

Then the Secretary made his own case at the Pentagon press briefing yesterday. He really is his own best asset in these situations. He was not defensive or strident; he was confident, relaxed and forceful, and struck a delicate balance between aggressively defending his achievements and being apparently-respectful of his critics. Asked, not surprisingly, off the bat about the criticism, he followed his opening statement with a nine-minute answer that outlined his accomplishments and goals. He detailed his record (“Now, let me just take a minute and tell you what’s gone on in this last five years…”) He expressed his commitment to his job (“I have a sense of urgency. I get up every morning and worry about protecting the American people and seeing if we’re doing everything humanly possible to see that we do the things that will make them safe.”) And he suggested that we not be too harsh with the dissenters. At the beginning of his answer, he said that “Change is difficult. It also happens to be urgently necessary.” Later, he continued, “there’s a lot of change going on, it’s challenging for people, it’s difficult for people. And we have to, I think, be reasonably tolerant with respect to things that get said.” In other words, he’s a man of action who’s moving forward while his detractors are trying to pull us back–but they’re really just timid or tradition-bound souls who are to be pitied more than censured.

I’m not so sure he’s out of the doghouse yet; the White House is clearly in crisis mode (a welcome place to be, frankly; the response until quite recently to the decline in Bush’s political fortunes has been far too lackadaisical), and the staff shakeups are obviously not over yet:

In a White House known for both defiance and optimism, yesterday’s senior staff changes represent a frank acknowledgment of the trouble in which President Bush now finds himself. They are also a signal of how starkly Bush’s second-term ambitions have shifted after a year of persistent problems at home and abroad.

I think the odds are that AE’s right, however. The changes the new Chief of Staff has initiated seem targeted at managing the domestic side of policy and at better managing ‘customer relations’ with the press and Congress. I’ve seen no signs of a lessening commitment to our policy on Iraq from Bush, nor have I seen any convincing case for relieving Rumsfeld of his duties.

Mistakes were made, no doubt, but critics of Rumsfeld are long on second-guessing and short on ideas to better manage the present. Regardless of the identity of the Secretary of Defense, things will not measurably improve in Iraq until its own domestic political stalemate is broken. Bush is right to concentrate on shoring things up domestically. For now, our diplomatic skills are more important in Iraq than our military might…