As a prominent public figure, Robert McNamara was before my time. He had stepped down as Secretary of Defense well before I was even born. But the man who died Monday had a more profound influence on our country’s politics and policy than any number of more recent, more familiar, and more famous names.
McNamara was 93 years and one month old. He was born in 1916, before the U.S. was involved in World War I, and the strongest influence on his worldview was almost certainly World War II, in which he served under Gen. Curtis LeMay helping plan bombing strategy before the age of 30. But his rise to fame (and infamy) was certainly his management of the Vietnam War from 1961-’67.
And the results of that war had a negative impact on the politics and culture of this country that was both immediate (undermining the effectiveness of Johnson’s Great Society programs and polarizing the American electorate) and lasting (paving the way for Reagan-era feel-good revisionism, and teaching all the wrong lessons to the phalanx of neoconservatives who took us into Iraq).
McNamara certainly had second thoughts about his role in history, and in later years he expressed them, most notably in his 1995 memoir. But for all the media scrutiny to which he was subjected, in the ’60s and the ’90s, I still don’t find it (quite) possible to get inside his head.
Tags: Dick Cheney, history, international, Iran, Iraq, neoconservatives, Robert McNamara, Vietnam war
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