MR. CARD DEPARTS

Somewhere among the administration’s slow response to Katrina, its Dubai Ports disaster and dead-on-arrival 2007 budget, conservative commentators urged President Bush to shake up his administration by naming new people to top positions. The role of chief of staff, occupied by Andrew Card, was mentioned regularly.

Calling for a staff shakeup halfway through the second term of an administration is like demanding cold weather in November – you will soon be right but wrong if you claim credit for it. Andrew Card, part-time resident of Poland, Maine, served George Bush ably for five years, a long time for any chief of staff and nearing a record, but all jobs have life spans and Mr. Card reached the end of this one. That may count as a shake-up, but if so it’s a minor one.

That won’t stop the commentators from seeing meaning in this resignation. The best known recent call for remaking the administration came from Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, who proposed replacing Vice President Dick Cheney with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who would in turn be replaced by Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut.

Mr. Cheney wouldn’t leave under this plan – he would take over Donald Rumsfeld’s job at Defense. Also out would be Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, spokesman Scott McClellan and Mr. Card, to be replaced by economic advisor Al Hubbard.

Despite the generous advice, President Bush selected Joshua Bolten, a longtime adviser to the president and currently his budget director. If conservatives were looking for the administration to sharpen its political edge with new voices, they didn’t get it with this change. Whatever the difficulty of finding a top official to serve out a term, the president chose someone who will maintain the outlook that already exists at the administration.

Anyway, the real question of change did not lie with Mr. Card, but with his nominal subordinate, Karl Rove. Were he to leave for any but obvious reasons commentators would excite themselves beyond reason, not that this would be unusual.