What Happened to Bush's Dream Team?

By John F. Dickerson and Matthew Cooper

During Donald Rumsfeld's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, a few members of the audience shouted down the Secretary of Defense. He took it impassively. But then, he'd had recent experience with heckling, some of it from colleagues within the Administration. They engaged all week in thinly veiled finger pointing over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and, in a rare move, the White House let it be known that the President had privately rebuked his Defense Secretary for not advising him of the extent of the problem. A senior Administration official said the relationship between the White House and the Pentagon was "in flames." The President, says a Bush adviser, "is legitimately pissed."

What happened to the dream team? For more than a year, the all-stars in the Bush war council and their staffs have been engaged in nearly open warfare over Iraq and its aftermath, but officials have always maintained that the occasional hard words and bruises were the natural by-products of serious debate fostered by a CEO President who savors a contest of ideas so he can choose the best. That story line is becoming harder to maintain, and last week seemed to mark the moment when everyone stopped feigning propriety.

Top Bush officials griped about what one called Rumsfeld's "destructive arrogance." Says the adviser: "You have no idea what it's like to deal with the United States of Rumsfeld." Colin Powell's closest aides, like chief of staff Larry Wilkerson, were quoted in GQ magazine, saying that Powell was weary of fighting ideological "utopians" in the Administration and being forced to do "damage control" and "apologizing around the world." Powell's foes, perhaps in retaliation, blamed him for being slow to decide to travel to the Middle East to help quell the furor over the abuse scandal. Says a senior Bush official of the open warfare: "It is not very conducive to a healthy working environment."

By letting reporters know the President had dressed down Rumsfeld, the White House joined in the internecine shoving it normally disdains. White House aides insist that the move was intended neither to placate critics who wanted Rumsfeld's head nor to fuel demands for the guillotine. The Bush team wanted to leak a piece of theater to make sure voters knew he was paying attention. Bush not only approved the leak but also made his staff let the Pentagon know it was coming. Others in the White House said the maneuver had an additional purpose: it was a presidential shot sent across the Potomac to the Pentagon, where officials were insisting the White House had been kept in the loop about the abuse investigation. "If we hadn't done that, the Pentagon would have said, 'We told the White House; the White House knew,'" says a senior White House official.

But the leak overshot the mark. The report of Bush's displeasure animated the Rumsfeld critics, who along with the press interpreted the move as an attempt to make him the fall guy for the growing scandal. Democrats may have, for the moment, saved the White House, which had begun to imagine the specter of a bipartisan consensus among nodding wise men that Rumsfeld, whom Bush never intended to remove, was finished. Instead, that claim was taken up vocally by partisan Democrats, including House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and presidential challenger John Kerry. At the White House, officials exhaled, happy that the situation was playing out along party lines. "Fortunately they overplayed their hands," said a senior Administration official of the Democrats.

Rumsfeld may still lose his job over this. And so may the President. Strategists in the Bush campaign do not believe the abuse scandal per se will hurt the President's political standing, but they admit that the nearly daily disclosures of depravity contribute to the feeling that Iraq is becoming a bigger mess. More important, the flare-ups from the conflict are blotting out positive developments. On the day Rumsfeld's testimony dominated the airwaves and the New York Times called for his resignation, it was announced that 288,000 new jobs were created in April. Bush heralded the news to campaign audiences but also had to address the Iraqi scandal. Before heading to Camp David for the weekend, he called Rumsfeld to say he'd done a "really good job." To the end, the President was eager to keep his team together. The question is whether, in its dysfunction, it is serving him well. --With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, James Carney, Viveca Novak and Douglas Waller

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, James Carney, Viveca Novak and Douglas Waller