Turnover Trouble

Times have been tough this spring at the top of the Bush administration.

In late March, as calls mounted on Capitol Hill for a White House shake-up, President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, stepped up-and aside-announcing he would leave his post to make way for Joshua Bolten, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, to take over.

Standing at Bush's side to anriounce his departure, Card sounded less like he was eager to return to private life and more like he accepted the reality that it was time for him to go. "Ecclesiastes reminds us that there are different seasons, and there is a new season. . . . Josh Bolten is the right person for that season," he said.

There could be little question that Card's departure was designed to address increasing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of everything from the Hurricane Katrina response to the Iraq war to the effort by a state-owned company in the United Arab Emirates to purchase operations at several U.S. ports. In this respect, the move turned out to be less than fully successful, because the call quickly came for more heads to roll.