Cons

Somebody needs to disable or hide all the shredders in Washington, because there are lots of Republicans looking to get out from under their paper trail. First among them, Donny Rumsfeld. Donny, as you'll no doubt recall, was secretary of Defense from 2000 to yesterday. In his tenure, he managed trto transform the greatest fighting force in the history of the world into a bunch of incompetent losing torturers.

Thanks in part to Donny's performance, the Republican Bush Worshippers lost enough seats in both chambers to hand the entire Congress back to the grown-ups. Churlish self-important perpetual teen Karl Rove - often credited with possessing a "political genius" simply because he has no moral compass and no sense of decency - blew this election by not insisting that Donny be jetisoned a month ago.

If Georgie could have shoved Donny off the train before the election, it would surely have saved the Senate for his party. Georgie couldn't do that because it would have made the election not merely a referendum on how badly he's done his job, but also one where people would have agreed with his own admission that he had done a terrible job.

By sending Donny home now, Georgie doesn't have to listen to voters agree with him.

You wonder whether, at any level, he gets how badly he's screwed up. Does he have the mental fortitude to admit that everything he's tried to do is an abject failure? I'm not sure he ever will.

But one reminder will be the spectre of Bob Gates at Defense. Gates is his Daddy's man, probably a grown-up. What will it be like to have an adult at the White House and Defense?

A government run on neocon fantasies, evangelical social policy, and ninteenth-century robber baron economic policy is not one that will welcome the cold slap of reality.

But with Donny - a top dreamer - gone to wait for his time in hell, the wide-awake Democrats will have a dose of caffeine for the lot of them.