Bush Backs Rumsfeld, Remains Upbeat on Iraq

By Don Gonyea

Published December 20, 2004 at 12:00 AM EST

President Bush expresses continued faith in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and insists Iraq elections will proceed in January as planned, despite some setbacks. Bush made the comments in a year-end news conference during which he also made the case for Social Security reform and defended the vetting process used in Bernard Kerik's abortive nomination as head of homeland security. NPR's Don Gonyea reports.

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Don Gonyea

You're most likely to find NPR's Don Gonyea on the road, in some battleground state looking for voters to sit with him at the local lunch spot, the VFW or union hall, at a campaign rally, or at their kitchen tables to tell him what's on their minds. Through countless such conversations over the course of the year, he gets a ground-level view of American elections. Gonyea is NPR's National Political Correspondent, a position he has held since 2010. His reports can be heard on all NPR News programs and at NPR.org. To hear his sound-rich stories is akin to riding in the passenger seat of his rental car, traveling through Iowa or South Carolina or Michigan or wherever, right along with him.