So did Rove, who thought it was a mistake to invite a confirmation hearing for a new defense secretary amid the midterm campaign. Keeping Rumsfeld onboard: The president raised his hand. The president asked for a show of hands on the matter.
Bush wanted their thoughts on how to buoy the sagging presidency. One evening in April 2006, Bush invited several confidants - Dan Bartlett, Karl Rove, Josh Bolten, Andy Card, Condi Rice, Steve Hadley, Ken Mehlman, Karen Hughes, Margaret Spellings, and Ed Gillespie - to have dinner at the residence. At the same time, by 2005 the legendary micromanager had grown noticeably detached from Iraq policymaking, even as he refused to yield an iota of sovereignty. No detail was too petty for Rummy, who daily issued dozens of memos he called "snowflakes" (for their blizzard-like volume) to his frazzled subordinates. Rumsfeld waged bureaucratic war on so many fronts that NSC and State Department staffers could not hope to compete against him. Though he had regularly dined with CIA director George Tenet, Rumsfeld openly disapproved of the agency's human intelligence capability - to the point of studying the National Security Act of 1947 to see if he could justify seizing control of the CIA during wartime. His cavalier quips (referring to the insurgents as "a few dead-enders," for example) had infuriated the communications shop. The defense secretary's unpopularity inside Bushworld was almost as fervent as it was outside of it. He would hand Democrats the head of Donald Rumsfeld. What few others knew at the time was that Bush would show what a sport he was in rather dramatic fashion. Bolten, as always, pushed for the president to hold a press conference, as a public show of sportsmanship.
Weeks before the election, Bartlett, Rove, Bolten, Hagin, and Joel Kaplan had convened to prepare for the worst. The routing of the GOP was not an unexpected development at the White House. " Even today."īush, the compulsive optimist, replied, " Especially today." "Thank you for the privilege of serving," he said. On the morning after the election, Bolten upped the ante.
In this excerpt from Dead Certain, author Robert Draper describes the aftermath of the 2006 midterm elections and the ouster of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.Īs the first senior staffer the president saw each morning, Josh Bolten had made it a habit to greet Bush with a formal show of gratitude: "Thank you for the privilege of serving today." Bush usually grunted something halfhearted in reply.
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