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Rumsfeld says Democrats key in early political formation

During Donald Rumsfeld's first public appearance since the release of his new book, he praised many former elected officials and a surprising number of them were Democrats.

A man who has been a Republican during his entire political career told a crowd of some 700 people at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center that the first politician to influence him was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

A similar inspiration came just before his graduation from Princeton University, when Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate for president in 1952 and 1956, came to speak.

In 1962, when he was just 29 years old, Rumsfeld ran for Congress from Illinois. He said that John F. Kennedy's success as a young candidate for president two years earlier likely helped him in his race for Congress....

Read entire article at CNN