super simplistic question about Rumsfeld and Cheney, et al

[bobbieinok]

Why do the same people get recycled over and over in political administrations??? Some info about Rumsfaled and Cheney (from nicely arranged charts).

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pentagon/paths/

1969
Rumsfeld, a congressman from Ill., helps Nixon win and becomes director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, an unpopular liberal program which he ends up vigorously supporting. He is ambitious and has many enemies, but finds a mentor in Nixon.


Young Cheney flubs his first job interview with Rumsfeld, but quickly impresses him with a memo on how to run and staff OEO. He becomes Rumsfeld's low-key personal assistant.

1971
An unlikely dove in the White House
Rumsfeld realizes there is no strategy to win Vietnam. He secretly pushes to end the war and tries to get involved with post-war planning. Nixon tells him to concentrate elsewhere.




Cheney follows Rumsfeld to the White House, but soon moves on to serve as assistant director of the Cost of Living Council. He will stay there until 1973, when he returns to private life as a businessman.




1972:
Nixon wins re-election
Rumsfeld is still frustrated by his lack of specific duties in the White House. His biggest nemesis, Henry Kissinger, is frustrated too -- a new school of thought, nascent neoconservatism, has started challenging Kissinger's worldview.

1973:
Unlikely hawks
Rumsfeld seeks foreign experience to help him in a later Senate campaign. He gets it: He is named ambassador to NATO. He disapproves of NATO's sluggishness and begins to develop a hawkish view of the world. Meanwhile, Watergate is unfolding -- but, safely out of the country, he remains untainted by it.

[TomClash]

1. they know each other well nt

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Poppy's friends there to help out sonny-boy.