There is no way to forget that glare, the one that labels you, without any words, as a bleeding idiot. It’s the stare that the retired generals now describe as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s way of being dismissive when challenged about his Iraq War planning — a suffer-no-fools stare that is emblematic of an administration now on the ropes for its autocratic methods.

My own encounter with the Rumsfeldian smugness came long before his current reign at the Pentagon, perhaps a year after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was discussing how the U.S. military should reorganize for the post-Cold War world, and I suggested that perhaps we no longer needed the CIA. A dumb idea, to be sure, but it was an attempt at encouraging some lively discussion at a dinner party. Instead, Rumsfeld peered out over the top of his eyeglasses and fixed a withering glare, obviously relishing the awkward silence of the moment that none of the other half-dozen dinner guests dared to break. He then addressed someone else at the table on another topic and never again acknowledged my presence.

After that incident I recall wondering what he would be like in a serious policy meeting, considering his intensity during small talk around a dinner table. The minor insurrection of the half-dozen retired generals who have recently called for Rumsfeld’s resignation provided an answer. Even the military types defending him describe his management style as resistant to debate.

The recent attack on Rumsfeld strikes me as engaging much more than the fate of one highly placed official. The brash Pentagon chief has come to symbolize the entire Bush administration’s approach to governing: Entertain no dissent, damn your critics and, whatever happens, never say you were wrong — and don’t even think about saying you were sorry.

This is why George W. Bush cannot safely fire Rumsfeld. Rightly or wrongly, the president has permitted Rumsfeld to command the stage for so long that booting him now would not only seem to be an admission of error in Iraq. It would also undermine the theatrical premise of this administration as something akin to the OK Corral.

Indeed, Rumsfeld stepping aside would be like Wyatt Earp hiding behind the womenfolk once the gunplay started, or, at least that is how the Bush world sees itself. Consider how Rumsfeld defended himself during this latest attempt on his job.

“If every time there were critics and opponents to war we wouldn’t have won the Revolutionary War and we wouldn’t have been involved in World War I or II,” he said on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show last week. Putting himself on a par with those who won America’s greatest wars makes you think he must be amazed that we succeeded in those conflicts without him.

Still, the bravado sells, as it did with Limbaugh, who praised Rumsfeld in the April 17 broadcast for doing what he pleased without regard to public opinion. “The whole democratic process I would think becomes challenging for you because you have to make judgments,” Limbaugh said. “Do we do what’s right, or do we listen to the people?”

Rumsfeld could not agree more, saying, “Of course, if you started running around chasing public opinion polls — or a handful of people who are critics of this or critics on that — you wouldn’t get anywhere in this world.”

This is the essence of the Bush White House: doing what it decides is right, no matter what the public, the Congress, the United Nations or those ninnies in Europe think. Even opinions from the generals who once ran the ground game in Iraq aren’t allowed. In other words, as Limbaugh put it, the “whole democratic process” is just so challenging. You know, this whole business of building and maintaining a national consensus for your agenda is really tiresome.

Bush himself summed it up six months after he took office, in what was supposed to be a jocular response to a reporter’s question about how he would deal with Congress. “A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it,” he said.

Though he was joking, to many in Congress, in the armed forces and in capitals around the world, this administration’s my-way- or-the-highway style gives the impression that the dreams of a dictatorship are more than a passing fancy.

And yet, how much better off this president and his Defense secretary might be if along the way they had worked harder at using the democratic process to build solid support in Congress and among Americans who abandoned them when the going got tough in Iraq.

It is just like that dinner so many years ago. I would have been interested in hearing Rumsfeld explain the need for the CIA after the Cold War, no matter how obvious it might have been to him. Instead, like those pesky retired generals of today, I just got ignored.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.