Was That Really Donald Rumsfeld?

Now, he tells us: "Pundits tend to focus on individuals, not institutions. Personalities, after all, garner more headlines than do bureaucracies and agreements."

Wait a minute. No Bush administration official ever came off more colorfully, more personably, than Rumsfeld. Whenever he read from the script, reporters took it as a cue to check their phone messages. When he started bellyaching about rumors or tough questions, the notepads flashed.

And Rumsfeld, as much as anybody, knew this.

"Building the global architecture?" My goodness! In 2001, Rumsfeld told the New York Times editorial board:

If you're chasing the chicken
Around the chicken yard
And you don't have him yet,
And the question is, how close are you?
The answer is, it's tough to characterize
Because there's lots of zigs and zags.

Worst of all, Sunday's essay tells us nothing about what we want most to know: The zigs and zags in Rumsfeld's life. Has he gained weight? Restless Leg Syndrome? Has he grown a hippie beard, like Al Gore did after the 2000 election? Does he Sudoko? And what about the Cubs!?

Of course, that's what book tours are for. And surely, one of these days, Rumsfeld will start turning up with O'Reilly and Rush and Oprah, and if sales aren't flying, maybe even Colbert. We'll watch transfixed, remembering the days when smart bombs were smart, exit plans looked solid and "shock and awe" foreshadowed the way we would celebrate when the troops came home.

The best days of this war.

It's nice to see Rumsfeld taking on another bad guy. But let's not kid ourselves. He won't be remembered for his essays any more than O.J. will be for his touchdowns. It's too late for a new legacy. Sometimes, inertia can be downright endemic.

Hart Seely is a reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard and editor of "Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld."