History's seemingly unlimited store of irony now makes [Bush] 43 the evident instrument of the resurgence of the "realist" school of foreign policy so beloved of Bush 41 and so regularly scorned by this president -- until he turned to it for salvation in Iraq and elsewhere.

Replacing [Don Rumsfeld]'s abrasiveness and his now-aborted designs for military transformation with the safe hands and bureaucratic blandness of [Bob Gates], an ex-CIA chief formed by the Cold War, may give the White House a chance to get control of an interagency process that went off the rails in Iraq. One of Rumsfeld's last internal victories was to block an effort by Josh Bolten, Bush's chief of staff, to bring Gen. David Petraeus into the White House to coordinate Iraq policy.

The problems of Iraq are so deep today that improved policy coordination in Washington will not fix them. That will become even clearer in mid-December when the Iraq Study Group headed by Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton is due to deliver its findings and recommendations and, in the process, provide Bush with a second firebreak from rising opposition to the war.