If you do things and you believe in what you're doing, you darn well ought to be willing to stand up and defend them

As far as I can see, the very best interview of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in the wake of his new book Known and Unknown: A Memoir (I was privileged to shake his hand at CPAC) is that of John Hawkins, who brings up the issue that has tormented me over the years…

David Limbaugh had a question he wanted me to ask you and it's one I've heard often from conservatives over the last few years. There was an ocean of lies, smears and slander being fired off at the Bush Administration over the war and although conservatives were defending the war, a lot of times the administration came across more like a punching bag. There just wasn't a lot of pushback coming from the Bush White House. So why didn't the Bush Administration more vigorously defend itself, especially in the second term?

I have no idea. I know Karl Rove was a very smart man. He wrote a book and said that he considered one of the biggest failures of the Bush Administration to not push back. I watched it from afar during the presidential election, since I wasn't involved in politics -- where both candidates, McCain and Obama, attacked the Bush Administration -- and the White House not only did not defend the Bush Administration, it asked people not to either.

I guess the President must have decided he didn't want to be blamed for McCain's defeat. So, they just took it like a punching bag, as you say, which I think is a mistake. I mean if you do things and you believe in what you're doing, you darn well ought to be willing to stand up and defend them. I think Karl Rove felt that way and I suspect, in retrospect, that President Bush might even feel that way.