Cleaning Out the Closet
Powell has resigned; good. After Whitman, he was the most useless, but unlike her, I’d actually had some hope for Powell as Secretary of State, whereas Whitman at least tried to be effective on the EPA. Powell not only didn’t try, he was very quickly nothing more than a tool, giving himself, in the end, over to the Bush Administration lies on weapons of mass destruction, embarrassing the nation in front of the largest international embarrassment of all, the UN. Hard to believe this man was ever touted as Presidential material. He was just a patsy.

Meanwhile, Energy, Education, Commerce, and Agriculture have also been vacated, with no nominations having been made at this time. With a fight sure to ensue over Gonzales at Justice, and the potential for such contention over the putative nominees at State – Rice and Wolfowitz, notably; less so Danforth or Lugar – Bush may be seeking fast-track candidates for these. But there’s no hurry, obviously, since these haven’t been among his priorities from the beginning.

(Another notable resignation: William Safire is retiring his op-ed column. He’ll continue writing “On Language,” where he usually keeps Nixon out of the discussion.)

Update: As had been predicted, Bush has nominated Condolezza Rice to replace Powell. Oops, that link should be to here.