Rumsfeld Death Watch

That’s some harsh language, but it’s what Washington calls the anxious waiting period when pressure mounts for a public official to resign or get fired.

One striking instance, 30 years ago, was when the Nixon administration wanted to get rid of Patrick Gray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. John Ehrlichman, a tough-talking presidential assistant, telephoned a colleague: “I think we ought to let him hang there. Let him twist slowly, slowly in the wind.”

President Bush gives every indication that he really wants Mr. Rumsfeld to stay, yesterday calling his secretary “a caring fellow,” but Mr. Rumsfeld is beginning to twist anyway. Several prominent Republicans apparently want him to leave, if not immediately, then after the Iraqi elections. Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican fresh from a victory over Pentagon lobbyists on passage of the intelligence reform law, cited his leadership of the war in Iraq, his repeated failure to foresee the strength of the insurgency, the failure to protect the troops with adequate safety equipment and his reluctance to expand the number of troops.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the maverick Republican who eventually supported Mr. Bush for re-election, told The Associated Press that he had “no confidence” in the secretary. And Sen. Trent Lott’s remark that Mr. Rumsfeld should be replaced sometime soon was significant because the former Republican leader of the Senate is such a conventional conservative.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, the chairmen of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees warned against any change on the eve of scheduled elections in Iraq, but their defense of Mr. Rumsfeld sounded tepid. Armed Services chairman Sen. John Warner of Virginia would say only, “We should not at this point in time entertain any idea of changing those responsibilities in the Pentagon.”

If it is just a matter of timing, the question of whether Mr. Rumsfeld should stay has been answered among these Republicans, though the Republican who really counts doesn’t seem to feel that way.

Mr. Rumsfeld has been arrogant, evasive and contemptuous of those who doubted him. Those aren’t fatal traits in Washington. But he has been wrong – about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, the Iraqi reaction to a U.S. presence, the need for traditional allies and the troop level required to maintain order in Iraq. He was caught being cavalier on the question of armored Humvees, which fed into the latest mini-tempest about using a machine rather than his personal longhand to sign letters of condolence to the relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He quickly promised to start using a pen, but the example reinforced the idea that he was, literally, out of touch with the deaths of U.S. troops.

As much as the GOP has doubted Mr. Rumsfeld’s skills, Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan offered a useful caution: “If I thought those policies would change by changing the secretary of defense, I’d be all for it,” he said. “But I don’t see that that is the ticket to policy changes.” Still, the policy changes have to start somewhere. A new defense secretary – after the Iraqi elections – could please many members of both parties, and, long term, allow the Pentagon to recover from the current secretary’s errors.