Rumsfeld versus Rumsfeld

SUPPOSE YOU ARE a new White House chief of staff. One of the difficulties you face is an extraordinarily powerful, well-entrenched Cabinet secretary who enjoys the strong support of the president. What do you do? Not to be vague about it: How should Joshua B. Bolten, who is driving to reshape the Bush administration, deal with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is fast becoming a political liability and may resist any serious change of direction?

There's already a model for this. It was set by none other than the young Rumsfeld himself, when he became White House chief of staff in the Ford administration and was confronted with the overwhelming authority of Henry A. Kissinger, then secretary of State and national security advisor

When Ford became president after Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974, he summoned Rumsfeld, his old friend from the days when the two were congressmen. Rumsfeld, who had been serving as Nixon's ambassador to NATO, quickly recruited Dick Cheney -- his top aide in two earlier jobs -- to serve as deputy chief of staff. At the time, the two had no mandate to challenge Kissinger. On the contrary, as Cheney later recalled, Ford's instructions to his new White House aides were to take control of domestic policy and to "stay out of the national security area." That was to be left entirely in Kissinger's hands.

Nevertheless, over the next 15 months, Rumsfeld whittled down Kissinger's role in national security and took on more and more power. How did he do it? And how might the young Rumsfeld have taken on the formidable Rumsfeld of today? Here are lessons for Bolten from Rumsfeld's early career:

\o71) Bide your \f7\o7time. \f7 In the early months, Rumsfeld left Kissinger alone and went after lesser rivals. You need time to redefine the issues.

\o72) Don't \f7\o7target him directly. \f7Instead, go after his bureaucratic empire.

The early Rumsfeld cut down Kissinger by arguing, rightly, that the same individual should not serve as both secretary of State and national security advisor. Someone challenging Rumsfeld today could fault his Pentagon for battling to maintain its control over agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Security Agency. Focusing on the secretary of Defense's turf battles with other agencies is one way of pointing out that Rumsfeld's disputes extend beyond his struggles with the career military.