The Washington Post fawns over Rumsfeld’s Rules and America is introduced to the “known unknowns” and other useless observations from the new secretary of defense: hundreds of pithy, compelling, and often humorous observations about leadership, business, and life.
The rules later earned praise from the Wall Street Journal as “required reading,” and from the New York Times which said: “Rumsfeld’s Rules can be profitably read in any organization. … The best reading, though, are his sprightly tips on inoculating oneself against that dread White House disease, the inflated ego.”
The mainstream media would sour on Rumsfeld in the first few months of the Bush administration, as he picked fights with the brass and controlled everything, flooding the defense establishment with his famous “snowflakes”—observations, questions, orders, the pre-Tweeting tweets of a narcissist. By the time 9/11 came about, Rumsfeld’s stock was in the toilet, until all of a sudden the same voices started to lavish praise on the “wartime” Rumsfeld, the wise man who would defeat terrorism (and Saddam Hussein) and bring peace to the land. We’re still fighting, 20 years later.