The Month of the Short Spoons

Gerard Baker has a hilarious (maybe I should say "an hilarious") post in the normally stodgy Times of London. I love the lines

"...[Bush] gently scoops out the detritus of his crushed and mangled Administration in an attempt to retrieve something of value in his remaining two and a half years",

"...the defenestration of the comically hapless Scott McClellan",

"The deeper, unreported truth about the Defence Secretary [Rumsfeld] and the trahison des généraux is that he can’t go because there is no one to replace him. Who in their right mind would want to run a demoralised Pentagon, fighting two messy wars abroad and a seething one at home?"

The Month of Short Spoons will not save George Bush's reputation

WHEN HAROLD Macmillan got rid of six of his Cabinet ministers in 1962, Harold Wilson produced one of his most memorable quips: “The Prime Minister has fired half his Cabinet,” he said. “The wrong half.”

Perhaps mindful of the futility of so many reshuffles on either side of the Atlantic, George Bush is leaving nothing to chance. Instead of a Night of the Long Knives, President Bush is currently in the middle of a Month of the Short Spoons — a long, drawn-out process in which he gently scoops out the detritus of his crushed and mangled Administration in an attempt to retrieve something of value in his remaining two and a half years.