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Ok, ok, I'll grant you that the century is yet young. And that there is fierce competition for that title. But we may already have a winner.

Ari Richter writes in the Weekly Standard that the president should consider replacing Donald Rumsfeld with John McCain. John McCain?

Not only must Rumsfeld stay, for all the reasons I've written again and again. But were he to go, McCain would be precisely the wrong person for the job because his track record (the phony anti-torture amendment, for example) would leave too many in the military distrustful of him to ever function well as SecDef.

Among the interestingly incorrect assumptions in Richter's piece is his assertion that McCain would be easily confirmed by his Senate pals. Doesn't anyone remember John Tower? Guess not. And Tower was toppled in a time when the Senate was less fiercely divided on partisan lines.

But pursuit of the SecDef job would serve one good purpose. It would sink McCain's presidential ambitions. Which is why, even if the president were sufficiently unwise to show Big Dog the door, McCain would never do it.

topics:
John McCain, Military