Keep On Rockin' in the Free World

Keep On Rockin' in the Free World
Why Don Rumsfeld became a star.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Monday, December 31, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST

Much as politics makes for strange bedfellows, war is providing some unusual new TV stars--notably a gent who in our country's hour of need has turned out to be one the classiest acts on camera: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. With his neatly combed gray hair, rimless glasses and bemused half-grin, Mr. Rumsfeld has turned up often on TV since Sept. 11--on the news and making the rounds of talk shows--to tell us about the war. But the place where you can most dependably find him, gratifyingly unedited, is the Pentagon briefing room.

Usually two or three times a week, Mr. Rumsfeld meets with the media to answer questions. These briefings, beamed out live, have become, to my mind, the best new show on television. It's a rare one that doesn't contain, at some point, some variation on his wry trademark reply when asked to discuss matters he'd rather not go into: "I could, but I won't."

Certainly, Mr. Rumsfeld has been attracting praise for these performances, and some of the comments suggest his appeal goes way beyond his mastery of military matters or his deft parrying of the press, when necessary. CNN, in a recent special report, described the courtly 69-year-old Mr. Rumsfeld as "a virtual rock star." Fox News in early December asked Vice President Dick Cheney to comment on Mr. Rumsfeld's new image as "a babe magnet for the 70-year-old set." Mr. Cheney replied that, yes, Mr. Rumsfeld had been taking "a lot of good-natured ribbing," and mentioned the rumor that Mr. Rumsfeld's afternoon press briefings were "taking audience share away from the afternoon soap operas." In recent weeks, the geriatric qualifiers have pretty much faded away, and in print and on the air, we've been hearing about Don Rumsfeld, sex symbol, the new hunk of home-front airtime.

The truth is, Mr. Rumsfeld, with his no-nonsense ways, comes across as tremendously appealing, and not only to the senior set. For starters, the world loves a winner, and under Mr. Rumsfeld's management the U.S. military has just vaulted from what certain quarters of the media characterized as a "quagmire" in Afghanistan to decisive victory over the Taliban in less than three months. That record would confer a certain allure even if the secretary never bothered to show up in the briefing room.

But Mr. Rumsfeld's press conferences carry an even broader appeal, something so important that if you don't own a TV set, I'd suggest buying one just to watch him. The basic source of Mr. Rumsfeld's charm is that he talks straight. He doesn't expend his energy on spin, but on laying out priorities for the defense of this nation and trying to get the job done right. "We know that victory will not come without a cost," and "it will not happen overnight," he keeps reminding us. But "the task is to keep at it until Americans can go about their lives without fear." He exudes respect for the public trust, and he has no patience for pandering to the media fixation of the moment. "That's all newspaper talk--just flat out" was how he dismissed a question last week speculating on scenarios for exploring the caves at Tora Bora.

It's a blessed relief to watch. Mr. Rumsfeld represents a huge departure from the era in which President Clinton and his retinue whirled their way through endless pirouettes of photo-op public policy--while Osama bin Laden got away with atrocities such as the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993, and the bombing of two of our embassies in Africa, in 1998, and laid the groundwork for Sept. 11. In the New Washington Order, Mr. Rumsfeld is willing to spell out in plain language what winning this war will require, as he did, for example, in a Dec. 11 briefing in which he noted that one U.S. goal is, quite simply, "to capture or kill all the al Qaeda."

At the same time, he artfully resists getting lost in detail, or offering too much. Asked at a Dec. 21 briefing if he could describe some of the captured senior leaders of al Qaeda and the Taliban, Mr. Rumsfeld replied, "I could, but I haven't decided if I want to," and then added the handy footnote, "I don't have the correct pronunciation of the names or the spelling or any of that." Asked at a briefing last Thursday about the accuracy of allegations made by bin Laden in his latest videotaped tirade, Mr. Rumsfeld declined to dignify Osama with debate. He noted simply that he had experts looking at the tape, didn't have much time for it himself, and given that bin Laden has killed thousands of innocents, lied repeatedly and hijacked a religion, "using him as an oracle of all truth would clearly be a mistake."

It helps, of course, that Mr. Rumsfeld brings to the proceedings a ready sense of humor. At a briefing last Thursday, a reporter asked the ritual question about where Osama bin Laden might be. Mr. Rumsfeld answered: "We hear six, seven, eight, 10, 12 conflicting reports every day. I've stopped chasing them." He then added, deadpan: "We do know, of certain knowledge, that he is either in Afghanistan or in some other country or dead."

It also helps that Mr. Rumsfeld, a former naval aviator, is no armchair warrior. On the morning the Pentagon was attacked, he gave the nation a clear display of his own courage and character. He was in the building when the plane hit. He rushed toward the flames to help the injured, only returning to his office to join the White House in crisis management.

That same evening, Sept. 11, Mr. Rumsfeld held the first of these wartime press briefings--in the still-burning Pentagon. He launched right into an opening statement about the tragedy, then interrupted himself in the middle of the first sentence to add, "First of all, good evening." It was a minor grace note, but it was also classic Rumsfeld, invoking a world in which civility matters, in which the priority in Washington would be not to flail and emote and self-promote, but to get a grip and actually deal with the problem. Mr. Rumsfeld went on to assure the country that "the Pentagon's functioning. It will be in business tomorrow."

There is every reason to expect that in the coming year, Mr. Rumsfeld will carry on with his briefings. But the toughest thing about tuning in is simply finding out when they are on. The schedule is irregular, though usually they take place in the late morning or early afternoon. So far they have been carried by most major news networks, including CNN, MSNBC and Fox, with replays on C-SPAN. One way to get an early alert is to log on to the Defense Department's Web site, at www.defenselink.mil, where times are posted as soon as a briefing is scheduled, and daily bulletins are available should you choose to subscribe.

While you're there, you can browse through "Rumsfeld's Rules," a collection of "reflections and quotations" that the secretary has gathered over the past 40 years. One of the best--and it shows, not least, in his briefings--is, "The way to do well is to do well."

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Thursdays on OpinionJournal.com and in The Wall Street Journal Europe as "Letter From America."