I didn't think it was possible

...for me to have any less respect for Dick Cheney or George Bush. But just when you think you've reached bottom, it turns out there's still more void beneath you. After Bush's "re"-election, Andy Card carefully started questioning the President, trying to ease Rumsfeld out of the SecDef office. The person who shot this down? Cheney:

No, Cheney said, he was predisposed to recommend that the president keep Rumsfeld right where he was. Card was not surprised.

In private conversations with Bush, Cheney said Rumsfeld's departure, no matter how it might be spun, would be seen only as an expression of doubt and hesitation on the war. It would give the war critics great heart and momentum, he confided to an aide, and soon they would be after him and then the president. He virtually insisted that Rumsfeld stay.

Let's put aside for a moment Cheney's cowardice and moral idiocy - for a moment. The fact is, he's wrong. Bush could have replaced Rumsfeld in late '04 or early '05, with basically zero political cost. Bringing in Lieberman would have been additional political gold. Does anyone seriously think that the nodding heads of Washington - the Broders, Brooks, and Friedmans of the world - wouldn't have died in glee at this false bipartisanship? Hell, Bush would have even picked up a true Republican vote in the Senate (Liberman's replacement would be named by a GOP Governor) and the Lamont campaign may never have happened.

There is, of course, the cowardice and moral idiocy. People are dying in Iraq, and more people have died because of Rumsfeld's incompetence. Changing Secretaries of Defense might not have done much, but it would be near-impossible to make things worse. Which brings us to Bush's own form of cowardice. People have talked about Card's meetings with Laura Bush, but I find what Woodward writes about afterwards most interesting:

Card's relationship with Rumsfeld was always difficult. Last year, in the days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans with devastating effect, Bush decided more troops were needed and asked Card to relay the message to Rumsfeld.

"You know I don't report to you," Rumsfeld said.

"I know you don't report to me," Card replied. "You report to the president. But believe me, he would like you to do this."

"I'm not going to do it unless the president tells me," Rumsfeld told the chief of staff. Too many strains and obligations were being placed on the National Guard.

Card protested that he had just talked to the president, who had made an absolute decision.

"Then he's going to have to tell me," Rumsfeld said.

"Hey," the president said to Card later. "Rumsfeld called me up. I thought you were going to handle that."

The President made a decision, under his authority as Commander-in-Chief, and delegated it to his Chief of Staff. That might not be unusual, but what gets me is Rumsfeld's reaction. Did Bush know that Rumsfeld was going to be so difficult? How could he not? Reading that passage, the only thing I can conclude is that Bush finds Rumsfled to be as arrogant and hard-headed as anyone else, but Bush has the option of not talking with him. We've seen previous reports of Rumsfeld being frozen out occasionally, but this is really interesting. Bush didn't want to talk to him. To have a President so dysfunctional with his SecDef - in a time of war, as we're constantly told - seems like a recipe for disaster.

Oh, right.