I agree Rumsfeld's pre-election departure would have tempered the Democratic victory and/or Republican thrashing. If Cheney has truly been the muscle behind keeping Rumsfeld around so long then Cheney may still be more of the problem vs. the solution.
I just hope the democrats use their new-found power with wisdom and a sense of cooperation (and that the remaining Republicans can do likewise)...the last thing this country needs right now is more polarization and divisiveness.
And for your amusement, amazement, further disdain, etc., here's an interesting paragraph from this week's issue of The Economist:
Better-informed American voters ask why Mr Bush's representatives in Iraq let looters gut Baghdad, why they sacked the civil servants who knew how to operate the electricity grid, and why they disbanded the army. The less well informed have a less detailed—but no less definite—impression of failure. They probably have not heard that the first name proposed for a reconstituted Iraqi army, the New Iraqi Corps, when abbreviated to NIC, means “*****” in Arabic. But they do know that, three and a half years after apparent boasts of victory, there are still a lot of American troops in Iraq, and the place looks an utter mess on the evening news.
Good grief! 
"While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats." Mark Twain