Townsend Out As Homeland Security Advisor

Fran Townsend, President Bush's main advisor on terrorism and Homeland Security issues, has announced she is on her way out of the White House.

This is, of course, a different kind of exodus than that of the much maligned Alberto Gonzales, and not nearly as high-profile as the departure of Karl Rove. Still, Townsend has been a central figure in the nation's terrorism risk management capacity, and was a very public face for everything the Bush administration wanted to talk about, whether that was increased terror risk from al-Qaeda or an examination of what went wrong with Hurricane Katrina.

So the top level advisors in Bush's camp keep leaving, and he's still got about 15 months left in office. Townsend is going to stick around and offer up some guidance to her replacement, and as always, I wonder what the effect of the vacuum of institutional knowledge will have on the national security apparatus' ability to operate. I also wonder who the next one to go will be. I'm putting my money on Secretary of the Interior Dick Kempthorne.