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Rumsfeld: Biography as hero-worship |
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By The Hill Staff
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Posted: 10/08/03 12:00 AM [ET] |
Clearly, Midge Decter is a big Donald Rumsfeld fan. The neoconservative writer begins her look at the two-time secretary of defense by relating an anecdote about a friend of hers, who, in a conversation with Decter, virtually “cooed” that she kept Rumsfeld’s picture in her dressing room.
Decter’s book on Rumsfeld also does some cooing over the man, his personality and his actions. Manliness, Decter concludes, is what enabled Rumsfeld to strike a chord with so many people in a country ready for change after eight years of boyishness under former President Bill Clinton.
Decter writes that she has known Rumsfeld for years in a mostly professional capacity but became intrigued with his ability to become a celebrity at almost 70, after years spent holding high-level posts. So she set out to write a personal portrait.
While Rumsfeld’s was something of a latter-day celebrity, the most interesting parts of Decter’s book, in fact, are about Rumsfeld’s younger years — a period less frequently written about than is his current stint atop the Pentagon hierarchy. Born in 1932, he spent much of his youth in the Chicago suburbs, in a family that moved around a lot. His father, George, joined the Navy at the relatively advanced age of 38 to serve in World War II — and the family (mother Jeanette, Donald and his sister Joan) accompanied him on his postings, to North Carolina, Washington state and California.
Back at Winnetka, Ill.’s New Trier High School, Rumsfeld met his future wife, Joyce. The two continued dating through college (he attended Princeton, she the University of Colorado). After graduation, they were married and moved to Pensacola, Fla., where Rumsfeld trained as a Navy aviator. Over the years, even after he left active military duty, the two continued to have a peripatetic existence as Rumsfeld moved from job to ever-higher-ranking job.
One gets a picture from Decter’s book of a supremely self-confident man, one who is perfectly capable of charging into a situation and changing it to his liking, while in the process alienating some of those around him — but remaining so convinced that what he’s doing is right that he’s able to sail through situations that might undo more insecure beings. Not that this comes as a surprise to anyone who’s watched Rumsfeld in his current post. But it’s interesting to see how this trait manifested itself throughout his life.
At age 30, Rumsfeld ran for Congress as a Republican, and won a House seat outside Chicago. As a relatively junior member, he played a role in getting one Gerald R. Ford of Michigan elected House minority leader. But after several terms, Rumsfeld —now the father of three children — needed a new challenge, and left in 1969 to head President Richard Nixon’s Office of Economic Opportunity.
He subsequently became U.S. ambassador to NATO, leaving Washington just as the Watergate scandal was heating up in early 1973, but returned the following year after Nixon’s resignation to serve as new president Ford’s chief of staff (Dick
Cheney was his deputy and took Rumsfeld’s place when Rumsfeld moved to the Pentagon for his first stint as defense secretary — the youngest ever — in 1975).
Among the pleasures of this book are the various family photos scattered through it — Rumsfeld as a high school wrestler, the Rumsfelds’ wedding picture, the whole Rumsfeld family with Ford and many more. They complement Decter’s descriptions of the numerous transitions in her subject’s life.
A major change for Rumsfeld occurred when Ford lost the presidency to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election. Rumsfeld left Washington to head the Skokie, Ill.-based Searle Pharmaceutical Co., dashing in with his usual aplomb to revamp the entire place and fire dozens of workers. But he didn’t leave government service behind, taking on various missions and commissions.
And he mounted a short-lived presidential bid in 1987, eventually dropping out for lack of support. But Decter hails Rumsfeld for, during that time, warning against terrorist threats to the United States.
Terrorism was to become the hallmark of his second tenure as defense secretary, the topic of the last several chapters of Decter’s book. She blasts the Clinton administration for its attitude toward the military and sympathetically depicts Rumsfeld’s tenure at the Pentagon — including a defense of his controversial remarks about “old Europe” during the buildup to the Iraq War.
You may nod your head in agreement or vociferously disagree with many of Decter’s conclusions about Rumsfeld. But in the end, you don’t have to have a picture of the man hanging on your dressing-room wall to gain something from reading this book.
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