The Gospel According to Rummy

By: Greg Mitchell If you have a taste for black humor you ought to take a deep drink this holiday season from a document called ?Rumsfeld?s Rules,? compiled by The Other Donald and based on what he called ?reflections and quotations ... gathered over the past 40 years.?

The lengthy collection of ?advice on government, business and life? appeared in The Wall Street Journal on January 29, 2001, at the start of the first Bush term. Aimed at other top Bush recruits at the time, it was resurrected today on the popular blog Eschaton.

How could Rumsfeld have known that a tip such as ?It is easier to get into something than to get out of it? would come back to haunt him in Iraq a few short years later?

Then there?s this gem: ?If you foul up, tell the president and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes.? And: ?Simply because a problem is shown to exist doesn't necessarily follow that there is a solution.?

Don't miss this one: "Remember the public trust. Strive to preserve and enhance the integrity of the office of the presidency. Pledge to leave it stronger than when you came."

And this: "Don't do or say things you would not like to see on the front page of The Washington Post."

In a revealing aside, he recalls that his father believed that young Donald?s personal philosophy at age 10 was, "If it doesn't go easy, force it.?

On a more amusing note, Rumsfeld approvingly quotes, of all people, CBS anchor Dan Rather, thusly: "There are only three responses to questions from the press: (1) 'I know and will tell you'; (2) 'I know and I can't tell you'; and (3) 'I don't know.' "

The only other newsman he draws from is H.L. Mencken, with this little beauty: "For every human problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong."

Growing more relevant every day is this Rumsfeld rule: "Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the president and do wonders for your performance."

Other press-related selections include:

"Avoid public spats. When a department argues with other government agencies in the press, it reduces the president's options."

"Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up."

"Don't divide the world into 'them' and 'us.' Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals, or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs and you have yours.

"If you try to please everybody, somebody's not going to like it."

In a final section he called ?On Life (and Other Things),? he quotes the following:

Mark Twain: "You can't pray a lie."

Anonymous: "First law of holes: If you get in one, stop digging."

Shimon Peres: "If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem but a fact, not to be solved but to be coped with over time."

Dwight D. Eisenhower: "If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it."