President Bush's announcement yesterday shows that elections do make a difference. The Democrats wanted Rumsfeld's head--and they got it. (One Republican commentator told local news radio that if Bush had done this a month before the election, the Democrats might not have taken the House.)
As far at the Robert Gates nomination goes, if I were the Democrats, I might want to give Gates a very hard time in confirmation hearings--and maybe reject him altogether, just to show who's boss...