It is now disclosed that Donald Rumsfeld resigned before last year’s elections, Bush became aware of it by election day, and the announcement was held until after the GOP had lost control of both houses of Congress.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Rumsfeld, architect of the unpopular Iraq war, resigned as defense secretary before last year’s November election but his decision was not announced until after the voting, according to his resignation letter obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.
The letter was dated November 6, the day before voters, angered by Iraq, went to the polls and swept Republicans from power in Congress. According to a stamp on the letter, President George W. Bush saw it on election day.
Bush, however, did not announce that Rumsfeld would leave until the day after the election.
That infuriated some Republicans, who said their party might have kept more seats in Congress and perhaps kept control of the Senate if Rumsfeld had left before the election.
First of all, surely the administration and the media do not believe we are that naive. Does anyone really buy that Bush did not know, pre-election, that Rumsfeld was going to resign? Hogwash.
Second, I, for one, do not accept the media’s mantra that the sole reason the Republicans lost control of Congress was because of Iraq. As demonstrated on this blog, there was dissatisfaction with the GOP on a number of issues, including drunken-sailor spending (it’s apparently easier to denounce this sort of thing when the other guy is in charge), highly publicized corruption and sex scandals (gleefully repeated ad nauseum by the MSM), and failure to deal with the still-festering immigration mess. Nonetheless, it is impossible to say that there weren’t enough Iraq-motivated voters who turned on the GOP to have made a difference, particularly in the highly-contested Senate races.
Third, this story again reminds us of the contempt with which the Bush Administration has come to view the conservative Republicans who put him into office and kept him there. To him, announcing Rumsfeld’s resignation would have been a sign of weakness, an admission that somebody else might have a point, however modest, about the need for a new approach. Such was the level of Presidential hubris that he was willing to gamble on the outcome - in effect sacrificing both houses of Congress to the opposing party - rather than prove his opponents right.
I don’t think it can be credibly argued that announcing Rumsfeld’s departure before the election would have lost as many votes as did the President’s one-fingered salute to those even well-intentioned supporters of change. How many here would have changed their votes if Rumsfeld resigned, let’s say, on November 1? And, if the President truly felt that a pre-election resignation would do more harm than good, than he had lost all perspective on the real world by that time. (We should have known this when he and Karl Rove kept insisting that the GOP would do “just fine” at the polls last fall.)
So, another day, another painful reminder of the lost promise of G. W. Bush. In record time, he managed to squander even the capital of a clear-cut election win in 2004 (in contrast to the bitterly disputed 2000 contest), and send his supporters packing in droves.
All because he came to believe in his own Imperial Presidency - we were just the pawns who got him there.
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Sitting on the fence again Rick come on tell us about Bush
Waiting for the auto Sarge defense netwoek activation in tango lima bravo
I’m sorry RickG, but I’m not following this post. It seems to me that all the reasons you’ve listed just point to the fact that the Rumsfeld announcement would have been irrelevant to the election results. If anything, I think that they didn’t announce it on election day because it would look like a publicity stunt with poor timing. The drunken sailor spending / lack of border security / scandals wouldn’t have been surpassed by a Rumsfeld resignation.
Rumsfield was not the problem. Bush was not the congressional problem although he may have contributed. John McSwine, Hayseed Graham, Arlen Spectacle, Chuck Haggle, etc ad infinitum - they are the problem.
Rick,
your post just about covers my opinions in their entirety. Especially the part about the clueless media mantra about Iraq being the main cause of the election losses.
The MSM, along with the Republican elite, still don’t have a clue as to how spending, immigration and general administration/party incompetence affected those elections (and the upcoming ones, too).
These people are liars or tragically incompetent. Or both.
There was a symphony of reasons the Republicans lost so much ground, and I think Bush was playing first violin. That said, I don’t think anouncing Rummy’s resignation the day before the election would have helped things a bit. More likely, it would have created a sense of instability and been seen as a big victory for the dems who had been calling for his resignation.
2. raiderdav
You may be right - no matter when it was made, the announcement may not have made a difference. But I cannot say for certain that there might have been people who may have grudgingly voted for Bush if the announcement came pre-election because they may have felt he was at least trying to move the ball forward. Again, maybe not, but I can’t say it couldn’t have happened.
On the other hand, I am skeptical that Bush would have lost any votes had Rumsfeld resigned before the election.
So, in other words, it MAY have helped, and it probably wouldn’t have hurt. My point is, Bush was willing to take that gamble because, in my view, he’s just gone over the end in the last few years.
As for the timing of the announcent being seen as a publicity stunt, some folks might have felt that way if it came out on election eve. Again, however, I simply don’t believe that this was a sudden decision by Rumsfeld without any forewarning to Bush. My guess is that this had been coming for weeks. Had the resignation been announced at the end of summer, the anti-Bush, anti-Rove media would have squawked, but I don’t think the timing would have been an issue by November.
Of course, we’ll never know, so we can now argue in speculate - which is what the blogosphere is all about, isn’t it?
5. Dennis
And because it came after the election it was seen as a victory for Bush? I don’t understand what sense it made for him to hold back the news. Again, I don’t believe for a moment that this decision was made the day before the election. Do you?
2.
By the way, I certainly agree with you that they should not have announced it on election day, or even election eve. If it was going to be done (and I was not one of those clamoring for Rummy’s resignation), it should have been done before that.
But it would have taken humility for W to have said, “We’ve struggled long and hard with this, things haven’t been going quite the way we want to, and we agree it’s time to adjust our approach.” Humility, though, is not W’s strong suit lately.
If Clinton could get a pass from a lot of people simply by apologizing for his disgusting behavior, surely folks would have appreciated something similar to the above from Bush.
Maybe we should ask Rove to cover this in his book…
Rick - No. How it was seen the day after the election is pretty irrelavent compared to how it would have been seen the day before the election. On election eve, it would have been seen as a desperation move and an admission that the dems were right (and Bush was wrong) about Rummy. Hardly something that would drive republican voters to the polls at the last second.
Yes, earlier would have been OK, too, as long as it was SIGNIFICANTLY earlier. Like months.
Rick - I see your point if indeed Bush knew for multiple weeks before the election. Maybe someone’s (poor selling) memoirs will clear this up for us in the future.
12.
Yep, here’s their chance. Has Rummy written his yet?
I suppose it’s barely possible that the decision was made that Rummy would resign IF the elections turned out bad, and they knew by election eve that was going to happen so Rummy tendered in case they wanted to pull a last minute surprise. But given the fact that one of the characteristics of Bush is that he supposedly doesn’t govern by popular opinion, that doesn’t make much sense either.
Or maybe Rove said, “Rummy, it’s fine” and the Donald thought he said, “Rummy, resign.”
Oh, well, I guess we’ll have to wait for the book.
I seem to recall the Bush Administration acknowledging knowing of Rummy’s resignation before the election. This acknowledgment was made immediately after election day. The reason given for not announcing it earlier was that it would have been perceived as a blatantly political maneuver, a decision for which Bush was predictably trashed for being secretive. This is not news.
I don’t have an opinion here…… don’t faint lol
I don’t think pride played a part in the decision, and I think #14 is right. Remember Bush immediately did a turn around after the elections, cleaning house in Iraq war headquarters, announced adding troops and the surge, lots of pride swallowed there.
Besides I remember Rumsfeld saying in interviews while he was still SecDef he had offered his resignation a couple of times previous when things were rough.
Bush is too stupid to make a decision like that on his own. He did what Dick and Carl told him to do.
I actually agree with RickG here. Tester won by 4000 votes, Webb won by 7000 votes. Many of the house races were narrowly won by democrats. If Bush had announced the resignation before the election it would have signaled Bush was open to a change of direction in Iraq. Dems would not have picked up as many seats in the red states. Oh well…