Card shuffling

Posted by Frank James at 1:38 p.m. CST

The White House announcement that Andrew Card is stepping down as White House chief-of-staff to be replaced by Josh Bolten, who will vacate the Office of Management and Budget director’s job, is being treated as big news in Washington.

It’s likely that most people beyond the Beltway couldn't care less about this high-level personnel shuffle. But what happens inside the White House can often have global consequences. So a change like this could matter, even to those who’ve never heard of Card.

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that senior White House staffers, many in their fifth year with the Bush administration, are tired. That explains so many of the political missteps from the ill-fated Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination to the doomed Dubai Ports World deal, the thinking goes.

Fellow Republicans who’ve suggested that the White House needed some new blood are unlikely be heartened by the naming of Bolten as Card’s successor. Bolten, after all, started in the administration as Card’s deputy.

But it probably doesn’t matter in the great scheme of things who the president chose as his new chief-of-staff at this point. No presidential aide can turn around the Iraq situation, and that will likely determine the present administration’s fate more than anything else.

As President Bush has himself acknowledged, Iraq has eaten deeply whatever political capital he had when he entered his second term. It has left him with a cramped political range of motion.

That political capital was going to be consumed regardless with each passing day of the president’s second term, making Bush an ever lamer duck with each day the campaign for the 2008 White House campaign draws closer. Actually, some would say it’s already started.

Unless Bolten has a secret for making time stand still, nothing changes.