Peter Rodman (1943-2008) - Adam Garfinkle - The American Interest Magazine

August 4, 2008 Peter Rodman (1943-2008) Adam Garfinkle

I have known Peter Rodman for so many years that I cannot remember when I met him. Peter and I were in email contact just last week (I asked him to write something for the next issue of The American Interest.), and he was reluctant to do it because he wanted to first finish the book he was writing since leaving government, a book on Presidential styles and Executive authority. When we had lunch a few weeks earlier at the Cosmos Club he told me about his illness and the chemotherapy he was undergoing but said he was feeling okay and getting better. When I saw his wife Veronique just about two weeks ago, I asked after Peter and she said everything seemed to be going well. So I am totally shocked by his death on Saturday, and very deeply saddened.

We worked together most closely in 2000-01 on the Hart-Rudman Commission. I was the chief writer of the three reports, and Peter was the study group director for the second phase of the project, the strategy phase. His work was superb, as it was before and after: thoughtful, shrewd, lucid and always on point. Peter was an excellent writer, an indefatigable worker who always put the mission first, and possessed of a wit so dry it could cut glass. He was unfailingly civil and genuinely interested in the search for truth. I can barely believe he’s gone.

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