Keep Rumsfeld - Please

The Chicago Tribune tees off on George (04.20.06):

"Should the president fire Donald Rumsfeld? That's like asking if Disney should retire Mickey Mouse. Why get rid of someone who represents everything important about an institution--particularly if doing so leaves those things unchanged? No, President Bush should keep Rumsfeld as a perennial symbol of the administration's essential characteristic: hubris." Why Bush should keep Rumsfeld

"If you want to know what went wrong in the presidency of George W. Bush, you could find plenty of candidates. There is its ineptitude, as when it ignored warnings about Al Qaeda until Sept. 11, 2001, or when it ignored warnings about Hurricane Katrina until New Orleans was under water." "There is its Soprano-style approach to critics and even in-house skeptics--from Joseph Wilson, whose wife was outed as a CIA agent after he questioned the case for war, to Lawrence Lindsey, the economic adviser canned for admitting the war might cost $200 billion, an estimate that turned out to be laughably low." "There is its peerless gift for self-delusion, as when the vice president said our troops in Iraq would be greeted as liberators and the insurgency--in May 2005--was in its 'last throes.'" "There is its brazen dishonesty, which is on exhibit every time the president and his budget directors claim to be practicing fiscal restraint, even as spending grows faster than Las Vegas." "All these traits flow from the same source: a self-congratulatory narcissism that is utterly impervious to events in the real world." "(F)iring him would establish the principle that those entrusted with power are accountable for their failures. And if we followed that policy, who knows where it might lead?"