I hold to the first line of thinking: Musharraf’s departure will remove the point-person around which the current coalition formed.

I’ve witnessed this occurrence in smaller committees: members who cannot win quorum votes will manufacture a proxy issue to build a new coalition around. This is usually a non-sequitur issue such as a member’s personality flaws, an etiquette issue, or a distant, vague externality (such as an IPCC report on Global Warming).

But this personalization of policy differences only lasts as long as the point-person remains moored in the committee. By leaving, the “controversial” figure removes the shared locus, rendering the contrarians rudderless.

Along with Musharraf, “W” is just such a figure. Another could be America itself, if one considers the EU’s Leftists, radical Islamists and the US’s Democratic party, and the NYT’s editorial board the revised quorum in this equation.

None can get a majority of Americans’ votes, so they coalesce around Americans’ weight problem, our “carbon footprint,” and “Bush’s Illegal War(s).”