Bye bye Pragmatism, bye bye.

On Newsnight, Sir Christopher Meyer, who was the UK amabassador to Washington, mentioned that, between Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, 'you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.' This is not really news. Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack very diplomatically intimates that the two are not overwhelmed by love for each other. Anyhow, as Fred Kaplan wrote last February in Slate,

Powell's best option, after January, may be to abandon his ambitions for further public office, nab a lucrative job in the private sector, and write the most outrageous kiss-and-tell political memoir that the world has ever seen.

I wonder, given that Powell has been loyal enough to lend his huge political capital to the Bush re-election campaign, would he actually anything really really scandalous up on the administration?

And as for the possible successor: Rice? I dread to think...