WASHINGTON - Pittsburgh Penguins General Manager Craig Patrick announced that he has accepted President Bush's offer to become the nation’s Secretary of Defense. Patrick has been under fire since it was disclosed in "The Hockey News" last week that six former members of the Penguins (nicknamed "The Retired Generals"), as well as Penguins' broadcasters Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald, signed a statement calling for his resignation. Meanwhile at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld announced that he was resigning from the President’s cabinet to take the job as general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins. This marks the first time since Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey became Secretary of Defense during the last days of the Truman Administration in 1951 (succeeding Dean Acheson, who left to manage a Washington D.C. automobile dealership) that a professional sports executive has ascended to a cabinet-level position.
Speaking to reporters in a joint news conference on Air Force One, President Bush and Penguins' President Ken Sawyer lauded both Rumsfeld and Patrick for their accomplishments. Bush read a joint statement: “It is admirable that both Don and Craig have exhibited a steadfast willingness to remain completely inflexible and to 'stay the course,' in spite of vast empirical evidence suggesting that innumerable other routes would have been preferable.”
Across the river at the Pentagon, Patrick and Rumsfeld held their own press conference. Both men said they were pleased with the progress they made with the Penguins and the war in Iraq, respectively. When pressed by reporters, neither man could identify a single thing they would have done differently during the time they held their now-former positions.
