Bipartisanship Ho?

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8, 2006 — -- Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner held a news conference on Oct. 5 to say that Iraq was "drifting sideways" and that bold action would be required to save the U.S. effort there.

At the time he was becoming one of the most vocal elected Republicans to express deep concern about the situation in Iraq and the U.S. strategy.

"I felt strongly then in what I said, and I did not have in my mind what has happened in the past 48 hours," Warner said today from the same podium.

What has happened, of course, is what could be a watershed victory by the Democrats, who took control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years Tuesday night and AP has projected they will take the Senate.

It was the frustration of Republicans like Warner and American voters that led to the rebuke for the president's party.

So Democrats were ebullient as they trickled in this morning, which started with bleary-eyed morning news conferences and photo ops touting their victories and publicly offering a warm and bipartisan hand to the White House.

"Democrats are going to treat Republicans differently than Republicans have treated Democrats," said Senate Minority -- perhaps soon to maybe be Majority -- Leader Harry Reid, who also called on President Bush to convene a bipartisan Iraq summit.

But some air was sucked out of the happy balloon in which Democrats were floating when Bush did something he hadn't done in six years of Republican dominance in Washington: He gave the Democrats what they had been asking for and got rid of Donald Rumsfeld, who may yet become the longest-serving defense secretary ever.

Rumsfeld will edge out Robert McNamara, the architect of Vietnam, that other years-long politically divisive war of the last 50 years, if he can make it through late December before his successor is confirmed.

But it's not likely he will make the record.

Even though the Democrats will take over the Senate, and thus the confirmation process, come Jan. 3, Reid and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan both said they would work to get Bush's nominee, former CIA Director Robert Gates, confirmed soon.

Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said it could happen during the lame duck session that started today.