The Best and the Brightest

"[President] Kennedy understood the gaps in [Robert] McNamara; even if he was brilliant, he was not wise. When Kennedy told him to bring back an answer on a question, McNamara would work diligently, come back, and present the answer to the question. If Kennedy noted that this was not the answer he wanted, McNamara would disappear and come back with the right answer this time... Kenny O'Donnell, who had become one of McNamara's more constant critics within the government and who would later argue vociferously with Bobby Kennedy that most of the mistakes of the Kennedy era had stemmed from McNamara...

It is not a particularly happy chapter in his life, he did not serve himself nor the country well, he was, there's no kinder or gentler word for it, a fool."

McNamara vs. Iacocca (Ford v Ferrari)

As an aside thought but while reading David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest I couldn't help but make an observation. Halberstam wrote:

But after he left, Lee Iacocca, who would eventually succeed him said that Bob McNamara had damn near ruined Ford by pushing that Falcon, too simple a car, with too small a profit for the company. Iacocca symbolized exactly the opposite of McNamara in the auto world... Lee brought in the Mustang, a car designed for the American consumer in just the way McNamara's cars were not.

It occurred to me that in the Matt Damon, Christian Bale movie Ford v Ferrari neither McNamara or Lee Iacocca is portrayed although Henry Ford II plays a significant role. Guess if either McNamara or Iacocca was portrayed it might have taken the film down a significant rabbit hole that was not central to the plot.

By the way - I enjoyed both the book and the movie.

EDIT: Mea culpa! Iacocca was portrayed in the movie. I just overlooked him several times. My bad.

The Best and the Brightest

"That McNamara's role was major, the he was by default usurping the role of the Secretary of State, did not faze him. He was intelligent, forceful, courageous, decent, everything in fact but wise...

If it just been a matter of getting the right goods to the right villages, we would have won; unfortunately, what we were selling was not what they were buying. This man, whose only real experience had been in dealing with the second largest automotive empire in the world, producing huge Western vehicles, was the last man to understand and measure the problems of a people looking for their political freedom."

In the words of President Lyndon Johnson, "I forgot he had only been president of Ford for one week."

The Best and the Brightest

"[General] Harkins began by corrupting the intelligence reports coming in. Up until 1961 they had been reasonably accurate, clear, unclouded, by bureaucratic ambition... in effect the Administration created a situation where it lied to itself...

His [Harkins] two main distinctions during his years years in service in Vietnam would be, first, that his reporting consistently misled the President of the United States, and second, that it brought him to a point of struggle with a vast number of his field officers who tried to file realistic (hence pessimistic) reports. But even here the fault was not necessarily Harkins'. In all those years he felt that he was only doing what Max Taylor wanted, and there was considerable evidence that this was true, that his optimism reflected back-channeled directives from Taylor...

General Paul Donal Harkins, fifty-seven, was a man of compelling mediocrity...

'He wasn't worth a damn, so he was removed,' [Secretary of Defense] McNamara would say of him later, 'you need intelligent people.' Of course McNamara failed to explain why Harkins had held his position for almost two and a half years."

The Best and the Brightest

The Vietminh did much to get rid of the colonial French from Vietnam after WW II while the politicians in the south did just the opposite. Many fought on the side of the French or profited from the war to expel them. Was it any surprise we would have an issue with "hearts and minds" when we appeared for all purposes to just be taking the place of France and installing our own politicians?

Under President Eisenhower when Dienbienphu fell to the Vietminh - bombing by US forces would rightly have been seen as an act of war. And Eisenhower rightly did not take the bait. President Kennedy opened that door a crack and slowly it swung wide open.

Those in power when the French again took over after WW II knew America should not get involved militarily. At best they'd be on the side of a colonial power when we were the poster child for anti-colonialism and the costs were likely to be more along the lines of the Philippines insurrection from 1899 to 1913 than the Korean conflict. Besides Americans were emotionally exhausted from both WW II and Korea.

By the time President Kennedy was elected - Americans were more rested, China had been "lost" to the Communists, and the US was now an acknowledged Super Power. Plus we were willing to believe in illusions. To paraphrase Richard Feynman, "The easiest person to fool is yourself." David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest tells the story of how America fooled ourselves into the Vietnam war.

Dense history but worth the time.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

Is it just me or does it seem like some of the early Tom Cruise movies like Risky Business and All the Right Moves have just disappeared into the ether? You hardly ever hear about those movies anymore or see them on TV or on any of the streaming services. Strange... MLB to end 70-year relationship with Topps. Tradition means nothing anymore to those who run the game. Citizens should ban together for a class-action suit to prevent MLB from ever referring to itself as "America's Pastime" ever again... Some Ancient Indian wisdom says your should never eat your next meal until you feel hunger pangs. The feeling of hunger is your body's signal to you that the previous meal has been digested and that your body is ready for you to eat again. Simple wisdom but so wise... My idea of multi-tasking is reading in the morning while drinking hot coffee or reading at night while drinking a cold beer... In light of what's happening in Afghanistan - I have the urge to re-read David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest for perspective (though I highly doubt anyone in the Biden Administration could be called either "the best" or "the brightest" with a straight face)...  

The Best and the Brightest

"There had been something of a gentleman's agreement among those who might be called The Good Journalists of Washington that the Kennedy Administration was one of excellence, that it was for good things, and against bad things, and that when it did lesser things it was only in self-defense."  - David Halberstam The Best and the Brightest

"One of the things which surprised me was how thin most of the newspaper and magazine reporting of the period was, the degree to which journalists accepted the norms of the government and, particularly in the glamorous Kennedy era, the reputation of these new stars at face value. Credit was given more readily for educational prowess and for academic achievement than for accomplishment in government." - David Halberstam The Best and the Brightest

The above are taken from David Halberstam's  introduction to the 1992 re-publishing of the book. The two paragraphs also easily could have been describing how the media covered the Obama Administration 48-years later. There's also no doubt in my mind if the media had their way it would also be the blueprint for how the Biden Administration would be covered. There's two glaring issues with that though - there's nobody that's going to describe the Biden Administration as "glamorous." Also the number of people who will buy what the media is peddling is much, much less than it was in 1960 or 2008.  

The role of the media is not to inform the public. It never was.