[LADY J]

"The whole thing is a little demeaning, it seems to me. Rumsfeld never set out to be anything but what he is, a no-nonsense administrater who has a job to do, and didn't let the '90s change his view of the right way to do things. The only reason anyone considers him sexy is because Clinton gave people the idea that his power was sexy."

Clinton NEVER gave sensible people the idea that his power was sexy. He just showed them that power can be sleazy!

Rumsfeld did not seek to have anyone think that he is sexy. WE decided that he was.

It's NOT demeaning to think someone is sexy and to say so!! To say that is to imply that we are incapable of having more than one thought at a time! We can be dead serious about politics - the war - and many other things and still think that Rummy is sexy!

[Defiant]

Did you ever publicly discuss that Ronald Reagan was sexy, or that Ollie North was sexy, or that Jeanne Kirkpatrick was not? Or did that whole concept get introduced with Bill Clinton? I don't recall such a fixation on the sexiness of various leaders, except possibly in the days of the Kennedys, when I was a toddler (Johnson's ugly mug banished those days quite rapidly).

Sure, there might have been the occasional article about the looks of a leader contributing to his popularity among women, but it was left at a subliminal level for the most part, and not a common topic of discussion and comparison, dissected to death.

If you find Rummy sexy, fine. What I'm saying is that I doubt you'd have been talking about it in polite company until Clinton broke those bounds of decency.