Why Bush (probably) won't dump Rumsfeld.

The most eyebrow-raising moment at today's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing came when Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld whether the time might come when it would be useful for him to step down—to prove how seriously Americans take the uproar over the Abu Ghraib tortures and to repair some of the damage to our reputation.

"That's possible," Rumsfeld instantly replied.

Earlier in the hearing, under questioning from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rumsfeld said he'd "resign in a minute" if he felt he could no longer be an "effective" secretary of defense. Rumsfeld also said, in his opening statement, that the incidents "occurred under my watch … I am accountable … I take full responsibility." In a ministerial government, these comments alone would guarantee resignation.

Yet it is exceedingly unlikely that Rummy will get the boot—and not just because we have a presidential system of government, and not just because our political language has been debased to the point where a word like "responsibility" means nothing.

Rumsfeld will almost certainly survive because President George W. Bush's political fortunes—at least for the moment—demand that he survive.

If Bush fires Rumsfeld, he would be admitting that he'd made a mistake in keeping Rummy onboard for so long or in hiring him for the job to begin with. Somewhere along the line, someone (Karl Rove?) advised Bush never to admit making a mistake. Up to a point, this was sound advice. To the extent Bush gets high marks in polls, they are chiefly for such traits as confidence, conviction, and consistency. He has to appear righteous—and right—to maintain these marks. For him to dump Rumsfeld—especially after saying several times that he'd keep him in his cabinet—would erode his entire image. The basis of his attacks on John Kerry (that he's a "flip-flopper") would seem hypocritical; the edifice of his re-election campaign could crumble.

If a president's (or presidential candidate's) most appealing slogan is, "I say what I mean and I mean what I say," the appeal starts to wash away if he changes his mind and retracts his words, especially if he does so under pressure.

Bush has other pressing reasons to keep Rumsfeld. Who would replace him? The Pentagon would be thrown into turmoil. By the rules of succession, the deputy secretary of defense would step up as acting secretary. But the deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, has even less credibility on Capitol Hill. In fact, Rumsfeld's entire inner circle is tainted—if not by the Abu Ghraib scandal, then by the controversies over the Iraq war and the "stovepiping" of false intelligence that led up to it. Confirmation hearings for a new secretary would be a golden opportunity to revisit each of these controversies in great detail, with an election just months away.

One more crucial factor: Rumsfeld, by all accounts, is a bureaucratic brawler. He will not go gently. He did not give up a lucrative executive's life and return to government in order to get tarred, feathered, and railroaded out of town. He also has a strong ally in Vice President Dick Cheney. The two worked side by side for Presidents Nixon and Ford; they have been constant allies in the internecine struggles of this administration. If Bush dumps Rumsfeld, he couldn't do so without Cheney's consent. Then watch out for the hellstorm.

No administration in recent memory has been so plagued by the parting shots of disloyal servants. Judging from the astonishing piece in the latest GQ, Secretary of State Colin Powell is now so disgruntled that he's authorizing his closest aides to trash his enemies—Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice—in the harshest terms and on the record. Look for Rumsfeld to start trashing, too, if he's rudely shown the door. (This may also explain why George Tenet survives. Many presidents have learned the wisdom of treating CIA directors gently.)