Donnie-brook: 6 Days Until Rumfeld Packs Up

Boy, it's been a tough weekend for Donald Rumsfeld.

The Economist cover asks him to resign. The New York Times asks him to resign. Cheney decided to gruffly defend him, angering a bi-partian group of senators and only dipping Rumsy further into the hot water.

We at the Rumsfeld Retrospective recognize that Donnie probably wants to be far away from these proceedings on this, the Day of Rest. Therefore, we focus our attention on what were far simpler times in the life of Rumsfeld. Staying with the corporate theme of yesterday, we turn our attention to:

Rummy the Executive Operator

Source: CBS News

As the image above (with Cheney in 1975) reminds us, Donnies been around the block more than a few times, and he's learned how to survive and thrive in a variety of circumstances. Although he was President Ford's chief of staff when the above picture was taken, Rumsfeld has quite impressively leveraged his public service to corporate gain.

Rumsfeld resigned from a number of boards of directors and advisory boards when he took the post of Secretary of Defense. To name a few:

He was Chairman of the Board of Directors of Gilead Sciences from 1998 to 2001, and a member of that board since 1988.

He was a boardmember at ABB (Asea Brown Boveri) Ltd. when they had a brisk business with North Korea.

He was a boardmember at Amylin Pharmaceuticals

He sat on the board of directors at the Tribune Company prior to joining the Bush Administration. (I'm not sure whether this is apropos, given his penchant for exacting language, or ironic, given his tendency to tell half-lies through semantic oddities.)

While helping steer these corporate behemoths, Donnie also found time for smaller corporate roles, including serving as Chairman of the Salomon Smith Barney International Advisory Board and helping out at the RAND Corporation.

Love him or loathe him, he ain't lazy. Let's hope that retirement teaches him to enjoy the little things, and that he stops to smell the roses.

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