SECRETARY OF STATE... BREMER?

The Weekly Standard has me convinced that Paul Bremer did a great job in Iraq. Key quote:

In Iraq, the center held. The country didn't fracture into three separate rump states, Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia. Neither civil war nor warlordism broke out (though terrorism did). Mass killings of former officials and collaborators with Saddam Hussein's regime never occurred, unlike the bloody reprisals in France and Italy after World War II.

A suggestion for the second Bush Administration: Bremer for Secretary of State, Colin Powell for Secretary of Defense (and ditch Rumsfeld.) Bremer's intimate knowledge of the problems of terror, state-formation, and (by extension, though thanks to him it didn't happen in Iraq) state failure, which are probably the world's most important problems. Putting Powell in Rumsfeld's shoes would end the State-Defense feud if anything would, wouldn't it?

This case for Dick Cheney is also pretty strong-- but I'm still not convinced. I disdain run-of-the-mill Cheney-bashing, and the Halliburton stuff is phony-baloney. But 1) Cheney is strongly identified with a muscular foreign policy, whereas I think the US should aim for a low profile for a while (to let the Bush revolution in foreign affairs gain traction) and 2) Cheney is not likely to be Bush's successor as president, and isn't that half the point of the vice-presidency? I'd like to see some bright young free-marketeer governor get the veep spot... but this is academic anyway, since Cheney's sure to stay.