Casualty of the Surge?

So Chuck Hagel is going to retire. It's hard for a lot of Republicans not to respond with an airy "good riddance." What the linked piece charitably refers to as a "maverick streak" often came off much more like sanctimony coupled with an excessive, preening self-regard.

As the piece notes, Hagel announced in March that he would announce whether he'd run for President later in the year. Now it turns out he won't. Hagel is, in some sense, a casualty of the surge. His vocal anti-Bush, anti-war stance is the only thing that offered him any hope of catching traction in a Republican presidential nominating contest -- and, of course, that gambit would work only if the situation in Iraq had continued to deteriorate so radically that the GOP was either in a panic at the prospect of nominating a stong-on-the-war candidate or the majority of its members had decided that the Iraq war was unwinnable.

Neither has happened, and a man with Hagel's ego isn't likely to want to enter a race where he'd become a second- or third-tier candidate. His evident presidential aspirations suggest that he was good and ready to leave the Senate. So taken together, it's curtains for Hagel, and for my money, not a moment too soon.