As all the accolades and reminiscences about Donald Rumsfeld poured in following the news Wednesday afternoon that the two-time former secretary of defense was dead at 88, one of the little-noticed footnotes was that ''Rummy'' — as friends and reporters called him— almost didn't get a second stint at the Pentagon in 2000.
He was not even George W. Bush's first choice for the Cabinet spot and, in fact, was intensely disliked by the president-elect's father.
Rumsfeld and former President George H.W. Bush ''couldn't stand each other,'' recalled veteran Washington chronicler Bob Woodward, ''The two had been young GOP stars in the 1970s. ... Bush Sr. thought Rumsfeld was arrogant, self-important, too sure of himself and Machiavellian.''
Rumsfeld, in turn, felt the elder Bush was, according to Woodward, ''a lightweight, a weak CIA director who did not appreciate the Soviet threat, and was manipulated by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.''
But after Bush's first choice for defense secretary, former Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., did not fare well in his December 2000 interview with the president-elect, Rumsfeld, at 68, came on like a thunderbolt. Bush was mightily impressed with the knowledge displayed by the former defense secretary about military transformation (making troops swifter and more efficient) and the fact, in Woodward's words, ''he seemed to have a plan.''
The fact that he was being vigorously promoted by longtime friend and Vice President-elect Dick Cheney also counted a lot with Bush. Rumsfeld, already the youngest defense secretary in history when tapped at age 43 by President Gerald Ford, became the second-oldest civilian head of America's armed forces.
The circumstances surrounding Rumsfeld's appointment to the Pentagon helm spoke volumes about the man. It was a classic maneuver of Washington's ''insider politics'' by a classic insider — one who had served as congressman, ambassador, White House chief of staff and Cabinet member.
In effect, Rumsfeld was very much the ''wise man'' cut from the same cloth as such past insiders as World War II Secretary of War Henry Stimson, postwar Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett and diplomat George Kennan.
He would go on, as was universally noted in the press Wednesday, to a highly turbulent tenure as defense secretary. As the civilian head of the U.S. armed forces during 9/11, Rumsfeld captured the nation's admiration with his quicksilver ripostes at news conferences and the updates on both the post-9/11 strike in Afghanistan and the attack on Iraq that toppled strongman Saddam Hussein.
''Rummy's a rock star,'' the late White House and Pentagon radio correspondent Ivan Scott (Rumsfeld's Princeton classmate) said in 2003.
But the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan appeared to be unending. There were also mounting questions about how much good U.S. occupation was doing in post-Saddam Iraq. Rumsfeld himself took particularly hard hits from the press and Congress for promoting Ahmed Chalabi as the ''George Washington of Iraq.''
(Rumsfeld eventually cut off ties with Chalabi, who was eventually accused of close ties with Iran.)
By the beginning of 2006, it was obvious that Rumsfeld's ''rock star'' status had flamed out and he was replaced by former CIA Director Robert Gates — barely a week before he would have broken the record as the longest-serving secretary of defense.
A Princeton graduate and U.S. naval aviator, the young Rumsfeld developed an early taste for politics as legislative assistant to Reps. David Dennison, R-Ohio, and Bob Griffin, R-Mich.
Returning to his home in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago, Rumsfeld worked in banking until veteran Republican Rep. Marguerite Church announced her retirement in 1962 and he had his chance to seek office himself.
Rumsfeld's old high school wrestling team buddies and other friends vigorously canvassed for him. The local GOP establishment favored State Rep. Marion Burks, but the Chicago Sun-Times began a string of Page One reports on how Burks' insurance business was under investigation by state authorities. At 30, Rumsfeld won the all-important primary with 57% of the vote.
In the 1960s, Rumsfeld was considered a star among House Republicans and a potential candidate for the Senate or the House GOP leadership. But at 36, he decided his future was not in the House or elective politics and readily accepted an appointment from President-elect Richard Nixon to run the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) — the anti-poverty agency created under President Lyndon Johnson that Nixon was determined to close down.
Rumsfeld, with new chief of staff Dick Cheney, was eager to do it. Although OEO still existed when Rumsfeld moved on in 1971, it was finally shut down a decade later under President Ronald Reagan.
The former congressman's ability to ''throw elbows'' in administration turf battles was demonstrated during his tenure at OEO. As the late columnist Robert Novak recalled, ''Rumsfeld made one audacious attempt to seize control of the domestic policy-making by transforming his Cabinet level [OEO], restricted to poverty matters, into the instrument for domestic policy.''
But this, as Novak pointed out, was destined for White House counsel John Ehrlichman.
He developed a close rapport with Nixon (they once talked at length late at night about how former Communist Whittaker Chambers helped Nixon's career) and served as his White House counsel and ambassador to NATO.
After Nixon resigned in 1974, Gerald Ford — whom House colleague Rumsfeld had backed for GOP leader — became president. He named Rumsfeld as his White House chief of staff and Rumsfeld's close associate Cheney became deputy chief of staff.
Within months, Ford fired Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and gave Rumsfeld his first stint at the Pentagon. It lasted about a year and, when George W. Bush gave him his second chance there, it was, in Woodward's words, ''as if he were saying ‘I think I've got some things to finish.'''
Those ''things to finish,'' of course, turned out to be Afghanistan and Iraq. How the future of both of those troubled countries turns out will inarguably be the pivotal factor in determining how history judges Donald Rumsfeld.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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