…. one last time.

Famous last home appearances:

Interesting topic selection when Donald Rumsfeld was asked at Friday’s town hall meeting about his choice of reading material as Defense Secretary:

I started reading a number of books about the Civil War. And one particularly good one was a book on Ulysses S. Grant. But I stopped. I found the struggle going on — gosh, those years, there were so many people killed and wounded, and they were all Americans, except for the foreign fighters who came over from Germany and Poland and elsewhere.

So I turned away from that and read a great deal about World War II. And that has been basically what I’ve been reading.

Um, did someone say Civil War?  Is that on the approved reading list these days?

Here at Extreme Mortman, one of our greatest pleasures is a Tony Snow press briefing, full of socratic argument, grand philosophy, and sly humor.  We were reminded today why we also enjoy a Donald Rumsfeld press conference — for its economy of words:

Q Mr. Secretary, on Capitol Hill today, again, there were several retired generals who called for your resignation. Are you considering resigning at all –
SEC. RUMSFELD: No.
Q — and if so, why not?
SEC. RUMSFELD: I’m not.

Donald Rumsfeld may be the oldest Defense Secretary ever, but his ideas are sure getting younger. Can you imagine a guy of his stature and in his position plugging blogs? Well, that’s exactly what he did before the Council on Foreign Relations:

“The U.S. government will have to develop the institutional capability to anticipate and act within the same news cycle. That will require instituting 24-hour press operation centers, elevating Internet operations and other channels of communications to the equal status of traditional 20th Century press relations. It will result in much less reliance on the traditional print press, just as the publics of the U.S. and the world are relying less on newspapers as their principal source of information. …

Throughout the world, advances in technology are forcing a massive information flow that dictatorships and extremists ultimately will not be able to control. Blogs are rapidly appearing even in countries where the press is still government-controlled.

Pro-democracy forces are communicating and organizing by e-mail, pagers and blackberries.”

Not bad talk from an elder statement embracing youthful change.