He is looking at the prospect of running - staring at it - even though he has been out of full-time government work for 10 years, has not run for office since 1968 and has not won an election outside his Illinois congressional district.
"I looked at it in 1977 pretty hard, when all my comtemporaries were starting to run (for 1980), and I decided that Reagan was going to win - he'd almost beaten (President Gerald R.) Ford in 1976," Rumsfeld said in an interview. "But this one looks wide open to me. . . . The last two presidents have come from outside of Washington, and I don't think that's an accident."
Right now, Rumsfeld does not come from Washington, although he has spent much of his life there. He lives in Chicago, where he recently resigned after seven years as chief executive officer of G.D. Searle & Co., the worldwide pharmaceutical giant. Indeed, as a candidate, he would offer Republican voters a compelling mix of experience in both the public and private sectors.
After three terms in Congress during the 1960s, Rumsfeld joined the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, first as director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, then as director of the Economic Stabilization Program, finaly as ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Under President Ford, a close friend, Rumsfeld served as transition director, White House chief of staff and secretary of defense. Under President Reagan, he has filled several temporary and part-time roles, most prominently as special envoy to the Middle East in 1983 and 1984.
It is quite a resume, but resumes do not get someone elected president. To some Republican politicians, Rumsfeld looks better on paper than in flesh and blood; he has neither a commanding physical presence nor a dynamic public speaking style. Rumsfeld concedes that he has been told by political professionals that he may be more qualified than electable.
His potential liabilities are considerable. His fame, such as it was, came a decade ago. His name never really reached household word status; a lot of people have always confused him with another Midwestern legislator-turne d- cabinet member, William D. Ruckelshaus.
Rumsfeld has strong conservative credentials, but he is viewed by party activists more as a traditional Republican than a Reagan Republican. And if he is going to have a broad political message for the voters, that message is still in the development stage. In his speeches, he offers what he calls a way of looking at the world as opposed to a way of solving problems.
"When we see inequities - and they exist - when we see people falling through the cracks, there is a natural, human, American instinct to want to fix it," he told his dinner audience, classifying himself as a believer in limited government.
"And if the first thing we think of is that we should centralize it, regularize it, nationalize it and control it, then we're beginning to copy systems that are failing all over the world, systems that people are fleeing, systems that money has already fled," he said.
On the budget deficit, he supports what amounts to the Reagan position, that the problem is "manageable" and should be addressed through cuts in domestic spending rather than military cutbacks or higher taxes. The fact that domestic spending is the real culprit, he says, should be obvious to "a trained ape."
Rumsfeld concedes that his candidacy would be a long shot, but argues that no politician - not Vice President Bush nor anyone else - is going to inherit the entire Reagan constituency.
"I think George (Bush) has made the right move in trying to pre-empt the nomination early, but it looks like he hasn't done it," Rumsfeld said. "His failure only serves as a magnet to draw more people into the race. I don't think it's an accident that this country hasn't elected a sitting vice president in 150 years. . . .
"I think we'll start out with six, eight or 10 candidates. We'll come out of the Iowa caucuses with five or six, then maybe only three or four will survive New Hampshire, which will take us into the Southern primaries. And after that, we'd be down to two."
The man sees himself in there somewhere. He has campaigned nationally (for other candidates) every election year since 1964, and he thinks he knows a little something about the process.
"If I run, it'll be because I think I have a chance to win," he said with furrowed brow. "I don't do things frivolously."