re: What does it take?
The administration screwup was accepting the Democratic premise that they had done something seriously wrong, and started running scared.
Bush has gotten very gun-shy in recent months. The Democratic fleas are spooking him.
Ditching Rumsfeld after actually declaring support for him was another example of this. Now we have Gates, whose main virtue seems to be that nobody will notice him.
I expect him to throw Gonzales out the window pretty soon, too. The president, after six years of furious non-stop attacks by the Democrats and the media, doesn't have much left.