Perhaps as much as the mid-term elections, yesterday marked a symbolic end to the Bush presidency. The reason? Two otherwise unrelated events: the release of the Iraq Study Group report and the announcement that Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter, is pregnant.

Along with new defense secretary Robert Gates, the Iraq panel confirms that U.S. policy in Iraq “is not working,” as if we needed a group of Washington wise men (and one woman) to confirm that.

Reviews of the panel’s work vary, as might be expected. In the Times, David Sanger writes…

In unusually sweeping and blunt language, the panel of five Republicans and five Democrats issued 79 specific recommendations.

But in Slate, Fred Kaplan calls those recommendations “an amorphous, equivocal grab bag.”

Doesn’t matter. The pundits can fight out the details. In terms of public perception, we now have an esteemed group of the sage saying that Bush’s Iraq war is a failure. The White House is now perhaps the only holdout in this conclusion. It has become borderline irrelevant in the debate on what to do in Iraq.

As for Mary Cheney’s pregnancy…well, isn’t it delicious? The daughter of a vice-president in an administration which wants to ban gay marriage is a lesbian, has been with her partner for 15 years, and is pregnant.

“This,” the Washington Post writes with what must be a chuckle, “is the first child for both.”

The Times reports that Dana Perino, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush, said that Mr. Cheney had recently told the president about the pregnancy and that “the president said he was happy for him.”

Wouldn’t you love to have been a fly on the wall during that conversation?

“Mr. President, remember that daughter I have…?”

The point is that Bush is not only losing the military war in Iraq—by the way, 10 American soldiers were killed in Iraq yesterday—he is losing the culture war here at home.

The anti-gay policies of the Bush administration have always been driven more by politics than by sincerity. (I don’t know if this makes them more or less repellent.)

Now there are no more elections in which Karl Rove can use homophobia to whip up fear/support for President Bush. Mary Cheney’s pregnancy could have a profound cultural impact; the culture war won’t end, but its politics have just become considerably more complicated. And, in any case, we can expect that the Bush administration’s attempts to build support by exploiting homophobia just ended once and for all.

Incidentally, do you think that Mary Cheney waited to announce her pregnancy—waited, indeed, to get pregnant—until this last election was over, or close enough?

It wouldn’t surprise me a bit…. She too knows that GWB is nearing his expiration date.