Rumsfeld Rules
The defense secretary is a blast from the past who is the man of the hour.
By Jay Nordlinger
From the December 31, 2001, issue of National Review
Who's the "star" of this war so far? That's a vulgar consideration, given the awful work that has to be done. But there is, undeniably, an answer: Don Rumsfeld. Yes, Rumsfeld: defense secretary, TV personality, sex symbol (no kidding — more on that in a second), role model, inspiration. As one Washington arbiter puts it, "Rummy" is the man now. The man to whom the nation turns, the man to whom it listens. Nearly everyone — Republican or Democrat — sees him as the right guy at the right time in the right job.
One longtime Rumsfeld friend explains its nicely — and in decidedly Rummyesque fashion: "We're not playing pitty-patty anymore. We have a foe that's proven deadly. People look for a different kind of person to run Washington — as far away from the Clinton type as you can get."
Evidence of Rumsfeld mania is everywhere, and it's mounting. Consider a few facts:
Reports have it that people gather round to watch Rumsfeld press conferences the way they do Oprah.
One Hollywood grande dame, hostess of a prized post-Oscar party, says to another Hollywood grande dame, "I'll call you in the morning." The second dame replies, "Okay, but be careful: Rumsfeld's on at 9:45."
Women confide that they have . . . well, un-defense-policy-like thoughts about the secretary of defense. Not just older women, either, and not just stiff-haired Republicans: young ones, liberal ones, whatever. Larry King is moved to ask Rumsfeld about his new status as sex symbol. Says Rumsfeld, "Oh, come on. For the AARP, perhaps. I'm pushing seventy years old." Yeah, so?
A journalist who's a perfect parody of a liberal — reflexively so — duly thinks that John Ashcroft is the devil incarnate. But she confesses: "I love Rumsfeld."
Saturday Night Live — ever a barometer of cool — makes Rumsfeld something of a cult figure, or rather, acknowledges his status as such. Its parody of a Rumsfeld press conference is wildly successful. "Rumsfeld" makes the reporters look ridiculous, responding bluntly and tartly to not-so-bright questions. It's not every day that this show makes a Republican military official look with-it, the press corps not.
And so on. Rumsfeld is definitely the man of the hour, a classic American type returned to do a hard duty. He is direct, decent, and clear. It doesn't hurt him, either, that he is, indeed, a "handsome Joe," as my grandmother would say. Rumsfeld is this war's pin-up, its Betty Grable.
Which drives certain Rumsfeld staffers slightly nuts, of course, because the SecDef — SexDef? — is a terribly serious guy, overseeing a terribly serious operation, and all this "star" talk is just style, image: but the style and image aren't necessarily disconnected from the exigencies and obligations of the current situation. What Rumsfeld is, is a throwback. That's the word that keeps coming up in reference to him: "throwback." He's a reminder of the Greatest Generation — though he's about a half-generation younger than that — at a time when Greatest Generation grit and clarity of purpose are called for. He's not fighting on the battlefield, risking life and limb; but he is representing — reflecting — those who do, as civilian leaders often must.
You can get too sociological about this, but Rumsfeld is the anti-Alda. In a feminized society — whose idea of a male sex symbol has been the Brad Pitt-style pretty boy — he is a relief, or a rediscovery. He has walked out of Father Knows Best, or some WWII flick. And just as he's the anti-Alda, he is — as everyone says — the anti-Clinton. The ultimate anti-Clinton. Whereas Clinton was a pain-feeler, Rumsfeld is more a pain-inflicter, at least where the country's enemies are concerned. And he must be the most uneuphemistic person alive. He is totally immune, and allergic, to "spin." Says an old Rumsfeld hand, "He doesn't like to be spun. He sees it in a second, and you're dead if you try to do it. And he doesn't spin other people."
Talk About a 'No-Spin Zone'
Ask most serious reporters and other keen types what they like about Rumsfeld — or even think of him — and they're liable to answer, "He tells the truth." Simple as that. Says one veteran newsman, "I've spent the better part of my life covering public officials, and on matters of policy — irrespective of party — most of them, when they're giving a briefing, cover their a**. That's why briefings are opaque, why they have all the spontaneity of a kabuki dance. But Rummy never dodges, never shucks. He doesn't say, 'I'll have to take that under advisement.' He just comes at you straight."
Rumsfeld himself seems to be obsessed with the truth. Early in the war, he wrote in an op-ed piece, "Some believe the first casualty of any war is the truth. But in this war, the first victory must be to tell the truth." He loves to admit what he doesn't know, and loves to tell you what he does know. He'll usually do so in "throwback" language. Featured in his lexicon are "golly," "holy mackerel," and "dadburn." Speaking of U.N. and American inspectors in Iraq, looking for the worst, he said, "We couldn't find beans, and it's there, and we know it's there." He spoke of "getting al-Qaeda and the Taliban the dickens out of Kabul and the rest of the country." "Beans"; "dickens" — it goes with the Vitalis-friendly hair. (Remember Vitalis?)
People are trading favorite Rumsfeld comments, and they're almost impossible not to repeat. Asked whether the U.S. was running out of targets in Afghanistan, he said, "We aren't running out of targets; Afghanistan is." After the Taliban crumbled, he recalled the time, days before, when "it looked like nothing was happening, when it looked like we were in a — all together, now — quagmire."
And he is almost deliriously unhesitant about using what National Review's Kate O'Beirne refers to as "the K-word": kill. Why, asked a reporter, are we using such heavy bombs? "They are being used on frontline al-Qaeda and Taliban troops to try to kill them." Oh. Rumsfeld even goes out of his way to use the K-word, abhorring euphemisms: "We have not been able, thus far, to stop them, that is to say, kill them." A Pakistani minister in Islamabad told the New York Times, "I am sorry to put it in this way, but Rumsfeld's been extremely callous." He has also been extremely realistic.
In his communications with the public, certain things come up, again and again. Rumsfeld bridles at suggestions that the U.S. — or Israel — is engaged in "retaliation" or "retribution" or "revenge." No, he insists: It's simple self-defense. "The only way to defend against terrorists is to go after the terrorists." He is relentless on the subject of what the war will require. Tim Russert asked him (on December 2), "You think we have a few months of long, bloody battle?" Said Rumsfeld, "Oh, I wouldn't limit it to that." He continually describes war as a "dirty job" — a "tough, long, grinding, dirty business." He also warns of casualties: "certain" casualties. How about collateral damage, the accidental killing of innocents? The terrorists' fault: They're the ones who started and necessitate this war. Rumsfeld emphasizes the newness, the strangeness, of the conflict, wherein "there isn't any army we can go out and defeat, no navy we can sink, no air forces we can shoot out of the sky." There will be no "exit strategies" in this one, and "no signing ceremony on the deck of the Missouri."
And he constantly reminds people of what the terrorists did on September 11, as though worried that someone may forget. "They have done a terrible, terrible thing, and have vowed to do it again. We can't let them."
One of his many jobs in government was envoy to the Middle East, under Reagan. His understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict is both breathtakingly simple and profound. He says, "There are many people in that part of the world who'd love to shove Israel into the sea, and not have it be there, and until people are willing to accept the presence of Israel, Israel obviously is not going to be able to make a deal." We are talking about "a very small country that doesn't have a big margin for error." Those sentences are worth about ten books by big-newspaper Middle East correspondents.
For me, a perfectly emblematic Rumsfeld moment came in that earlier-mentioned interview with Larry King. Here we have the Rumsfeldian element of surprise: the surprise of candor, and of an unbending logic. Larry asked him, "Is it very important that the coalition hold?" This seems a no-brainer: Yes (most people would say). But Rumsfeld squints his eyes, with those granny glasses, screws up his face, and — in a tone soaked with incredulity and exasperation — says, "No." He goes on to explain that coalitions come and go according to a particular task, and that "the worst thing you can do is allow a coalition to determine what your mission is."
Some people — Rumsfeld admirers — worry that he's spending too much time on television, when, after all, he's got both a war and a mammoth, problematic department to run. But others say that this war needs such a communicator, especially because it is a peculiar, confusing war. Besides which: Who else can do this, like that?
Who's Laughing Now?
When George W. Bush asked Rumsfeld to return to the Pentagon — he'd been defense secretary under Ford — there were a few snickers, a few groans. This was "throwback," indeed, and not the positive kind. Rumsfeld wasn't even one of "Poppy"'s boys! He was a Nixon-Ford guy! The taunts of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd sum up the now-ancient thinking about Rumsfeld. She dubbed him "Rip Van Rummy," rudely woken up after 25 years out of government. He was — get this — "clueless about the press" (who are Stradivariuses in his hands). "You can just hear Rummy slugging back a Scotch with Cheney in the Oval after they've put the Kid [Bush] to bed, grousing about the gazillion dollars' worth of investments he has to sell to avoid a conflict, and growling: 'Real men can drink twice that much arsenic.'" (Ah, yesteryear, when the greatest threat to us was that Republicans would poison the water supply.)
Tunes have changed — and Rumsfeld stalwarts, while tickled, are a little annoyed at the new, positive Rumsfeld image. He has always been "the man," they say, even if the press, and the change-resistant generals, and congressional anti-SDI-ers didn't like it. The common line now is, "Rumsfeld wasn't much of a secretary of defense, but he's a helluva secretary of war." This disgusts the Rumsfeldites, who argue that their guy has been, more than anything else, vindicated.
Long before it was cool, Rumsfeld was advocating a lighter, fleeter, more flexible, post-Cold War military (so was George W. Bush). A military adapted to protect against unseen phantoms of the night. In front of the Armed Services Committee, in June, Rumsfeld said, "We cannot know precisely who will threaten us in the decades ahead. But while it is difficult to know precisely who will threaten us, or where, or when, it is less difficult to anticipate how we will be threatened. We know, for example, that our open borders and open societies make it easy and inviting for terrorists to strike at our people where they live and work." On the morning of the 11th itself, before the planes hit, Rumsfeld was in his office, admonishing congressmen about the dangers of terrorism. For months (and years), he had cautioned against complacency, against sitting around "fat, dumb, and happy." He would talk of the need for "homeland defense": and the very words would cause eyes to roll.
Today, Rumsfeld staffers take pains not to say "I told you so" — their boss would be all over them "like ugly on ape," as the first Bush used to say — but sometimes it slips out.
These staffers are proud to work for Rumsfeld, and they enjoy the reaction they get when they tell people — just folks — where they work, and for whom. Rumsfeld is the central-casting tough-but-inspiring boss. One aide says, "You're scared to death to go in there [to Rumsfeld's office] and not perform properly. After you get to know him, there's a lot of banter and a lot of fun. But when the light turns on — when you're dealing with business — you gotta be on your toes. You learn as a staffer to do it right. He trains you. It takes about twice."
Rumsfeld is famously a nut about precision: precise words, precise thoughts, precise actions. A story is told from the 1996 Dole campaign that is semi-legend. (For this story, please bear in mind that Rumsfeld was chairman — sort of a figurehead chairman — of that campaign, and that, in the years after he left the Defense Department, he'd run the pharmaceutical company Searle.) Rumsfeld has a recent law-school grad working as his secretary. The guy — green, un-Rumsfeldized — screws up somehow, and Rumsfeld gives him what-for. He lectures him as follows: "You must learn to be precise. In the drug business, if I'm imprecise, people will die. In the Pentagon, if I'm imprecise, people will die." The poor kid left the office shook, but he did very well from then on. Rumsfeld became a benefactor, securing for him several jobs. On the campaign, the young man took to mimicking Rumsfeld's tongue-lashing, to the delight of all, including the chairman himself. It became kind of a giddy buzz phrase on a generally joyless adventure: People will die!
The respect you hear expressed for Rumsfeld is startling. It isn't sycophantic; it is deeply held. Vin Weber, the former congressman and now multipurpose Washingtonian, says, flatly, "He's the best man in government." So do others. Weber says, "He's the one guy about whom I've thought — more than about anyone else — 'It's really too bad he wasn't president.'" Plenty of others say the same thing.
Rumsfeld seems a man completely in possession of himself. He's close to — one would think — the end of a long and honored career. He's not nervous about what other people think of him; he's not afraid to lose his job; he's not looking to move up, to continue climbing the greasy pole. He is free — freer than most — to do and say what he regards as right.
Though he's seen as a dour type — and seems to revel in being a bearer of bad news, or a reminder of the present grimness — he's also an optimist, pointing toward ultimate victory. Constantly, he stresses the need to "hang in there," to see it through to the end. Under Nixon, he was ambassador to NATO, and, speaking of this time, he has said, "In the early Seventies, I'd have to fly back to testify against the amendments to reduce forces in Europe and to pull out of Europe and to give up and throw in the towel. We'd win by three, four, five votes. But here we are: No Soviet Union."
Rumsfeld — as much as the president — is the face of American determination in this war. Over the years, he has collected what he calls "Rumsfeld's Rules," for succeeding in government, business, and elsewhere. One of them is, "The most underestimated risk for a politician is overexposure." There will perhaps come a time when Rumsfeld is overexposed. But as the bombs are falling overseas and the home front is tense, most people seem to be saying: more, more, more. |
