It wasn’t just Donald Rumsfeld who got the boot Wednesday. The postelection shakeup also put a stake in the Era of the Neocons. Watching President Bush’s pained and antsy performance, I had the sense he’d fire Vice President Cheney if he could.

But he can’t, so he’s doing the next best thing. Rumsfeld is gone and with him is, hopefully, the neocons’ foolish and infuriating insistence that everything in Iraq is hunky-dory and not subject to change. “Full speed ahead,” Cheney said Sunday, just before he went on another hunting trip. Maybe he should take his fancy Italian shotgun to Iraq where it might do some good.

At least Bush got the point about Tuesday’s results. He was full of promises about bipartisan cooperation, showed a new degree of frustration with Iraq and signaled he’s ready to make major policy changes. That’s the real news – the policy is changing, whether Cheney likes it or not.

As for Rumsfeld, you know you’re a liability when the stock market goes up as soon as your firing is announced, which is what happened.

Beyond the timing of the change, the Bush family drama is also striking. In hiring Robert Gates to replace Rumsfeld, Bush is turning back to his dad’s team, which means the pragmatists are coming to the rescue. Hopefully, they’re coming to rescue not only Bush’s legacy, but also our efforts to defeat Islamic fundamentalists.

Gates, a former head of the CIA, is from the extended clan of Bush 41. He’s the president of Texas A&M University, the site of Bush 41’s Presidential Library.

His hiring should make the Bush family Thanksgiving less tense. There have been reports that father and son rarely speak, and never about Iraq. And it’s a fact that members of the 41 tribe, especially former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, have been banished from the current White House because they dissented on Iraq.

By turning to Gates, who served as Scowcroft’s deputy, it’s as though the prodigal son is knocking on Dad’s door and asking for help. The answer was yes, proving you always can go home again.

Shrinks will write books about this one, but for the rest of us, the policy bombshells will have to do. It matters very much that Gates is a member of the Iraq Study Group, the James Baker and Lee Hamilton-led bipartisan effort to chart a way out of the mess. When I wrote about Baker last month, I said Bush was forced “to outsource his thinking” on Iraq and that, if Baker could form a consensus, it would open the door to Rumsfeld’s leaving.

I had no idea it would happen so fast, or that Bush would “insource” a member of the study group as the replacement. Then again, it didn’t seem likely at the time that Democrats would give the GOP what Bush called the “thumpin’ ” they did on Election Day.

Bush has often been accused of not being the brightest bulb in the shop, but give him credit for being smart enough to realize the implications of the election. He moved quickly because he’s running out of time and now he has to share power. No wonder he looked so miserable the other day.

Because the war was the major reason the GOP lost Congress, Rumsfeld was the first to go. But there were other reasons, too, so he won’t be the last.

If only we could find some way to put Cheney on the list.