For most authors embarking on a biography, the danger is to identify too closely with their chosen subject. The result, in the worst case, becomes hagiography. But even scrupulous authors may get so enamoured with their subject that their judgement calls can be questioned by literary or political critics.
There is none of that here, in a biography of Robert McNamara, written by two of the finest American biographers. William Taubman won the Pulitzer Prize for his unvarnished biography of the Soviet leader Khruschev. His brother Philip, who appeared in person at the LBJ Library in Austin to discuss this book, told the audience that McNamara had “a distorted view of loyalty.”
For those who don’t remember, McNamara was Secretary of Defense under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. For many, he was the face of the Vietnam War, which tore the United States apart in a way not seen since the Civil War.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE BOOK
Willaim explained the learning curve as the biographical research progressed over more than a decade. “My attitude about McNamara, my underlying view of him, I would say deepened greatly by the process of doing this book. I learned a lot about him that I didn’t know. I came to understand facets of his character that I had no idea existed. But at the end of the project, I think I felt much the way I did at the beginning: I was not a fan of the Vietnam War. I didn’t fight in Vietnam, but I doubted the wisdom of the war at the time. And I this project certainly didn’t change my view of that.
“And in the end, I don’t really respect McNamara for his conduct, because as Bill and I say in the book, he lived a kind of double life during the Johnson years. He was a proponent of the war in the councils of the Johnson administration while he was an opponent of the war in private discussions with the Kennedys and others. He missed the opportunity to figure out what the right thing to do at that point was. And he then spent the rest of his life sort of psychologically tormented over the role that he had played in Vietnam and his failure to quit the administration and protest the war.”
Bill gave his take on the project. “Well, I think that I had a pretty superficial view of McNamara before starting. I knew what most people knew that he was a brilliant secretary of defense. I had no idea what we discovered, which is that he had decided as early as the end of 1965 that the war was unwinnable. Yet he’d stick it on for two or three years, presiding over it.
“It’s just very, very exciting to see a person so complex in all of his complexity. We talked to people who knew him and felt he was much more warm and friendly than the world realized. And it was also discovering in the evolution of his life that even as he climbed to the top and his brilliance took him there, at least early on in college and in graduate school, he would try to help people who he regarded as not as smart as he is.”
McNamara was one of the men referred to as ‘wise men’ who came out of World War II, who helped shape post-war America and the post-war world.
THE KENNEDY YEARS
While the talk and discussion at the LBJ Library (with William on a video link from his New England home) naturally focused on the Vietnam War (more on that later in this review), I found the passages in their book about his more private life to be just as intriguing. His relationship with First Lady Jackie Kennedy, described in a few pages here, has also sparked a lot of recent media interest.
“Jackie was much brighter, with a broader intellect than people have given her credit for,” McNamara himself said. The authors write that his “friendship with Jackie must have been exciting as well as satisfying…Here was a confident, powerful and reliable man, yet in her company a surprisingly vulnerable and empathetic figure who could be trusted to keep secrets.”
McNamara was a married man. “Was Margy alarmed by her husband’s deep friendship with Jackie?” the authors ask. On June 26, 1963 Margie (at left in lead photo) was dining with friends in Ann Arbor. She was “visibly bothered” that she was unable to contact her husband that night. Finally, after midnight, he answered the phone. He had been “dining out with Jackie at a tony Georgetown restaurant.” She did not seem happy. “How John Kennedy felt about the growing friendship between his wife and McNamara is also unclear,” write the Taubmans. They tantalizing conclude that both McNamara and Jackie “seemed to yearn for companionship outside of their marriages, even intimacy, if more of the soul than the body.” In the book, the Taubmans write that by 1968 Jackie had “a visceral opposition to the Vietnam war,” but remained “enthralled” by McNamara.
The 43-year-old newly elected Pres. Kennedy did not even know McNamara when he appointed the 44-year-old as Sec. of Defense. They got along well, because McNamara became a yes-man.
The misplaced loyalty Philip (pictured below) referred to in my headline was nicely explained by one of McNamara’s friends from Harvard Business School, who was later appointed Secretary of the Air Force, Eugene Zucker. “We quote this in the book, ‘McNamara was never more comfortable in defending a position than when he was defending the position the boss wanted, even when he, McNamara, did not really share that position, which is a way of saying he listened to his bosses and for the most part, tried to do what they said.’ And that seems strange too, because one thinks of him as so brilliant and self-confident that he would have had the strength, the gumption, not to agree from time to time with his boss, the president. Kennedy’s view was now McNamara’s view. And at the end, just before Kennedy was assassinated, the two of them shared the view that probably the United States should back out of Vietnam and start reducing the number of military advisors we had there.”
So, McNamara adjusted to what the President wanted and when the President was not sure, McNamara was not sure either. He actually admired JFK greatly. “Following Kennedy’s death,” the Taubmans write in the book, “McNamara’s friends worried about his mood and his increased intake of martinis.”
THE JOHNSON YEARS
The time was November 1963. “You couldn’t find a greater contrast in some ways to JFK than LBJ was. And so now suddenly, McNamara is dealing with this very shrewd, tough politician from Texas who has been a master in the Senate, a deal maker, a guy who knows how to manipulate people well with flattery on one hand and anger on the other hand.” LBJ had no trouble effectively manipulating McNamara, as many of the people who worked for Johnson were manipulated.
“He feels obliged in some ways to do what the president is telling him. He actually believes at the beginning that we need to engage more heavily in Vietnam. And so, they develop this very complicated relationship in which each man is using the other. He’s flattering Johnson, and Johnson is flattering him: ‘Bob, I couldn’t do this job without you.’”
Pres. Johnson even tells his wife Lady Bird over and over again, “This is the most important man in my government. He is the key guy. I couldn’t do the job if Bob left the Defense Department. When Bob goes to Vietnam, I worry I can’t sleep at night because I’m afraid he’ll get killed.”
Philip Taubman summed it up: “Very LBJ, right? They need each other basically to do their jobs. And out of that – and I think the book makes the case – out of that grows this misshapen relationship in which LBJ has the upper hand, of course. And it’s a misshapen relationship in which the two men reinforce the idea of escalating in Vietnam.”
A key question is why McNamara did not resign until 1968, since he personally did not support the war. The Taubman’s have their own theory on this. “If I’m Defense Secretary I can try to restrain Johnson from even more extreme measures in Vietnam like invading North Vietnam with ground troops which might lead to a confrontation with the Chinese or the Soviet Union which could escalate into a nuclear war. So better that I should stay rather than have a successor come in who will not moderate those kinds of recommendations. But the primary reason he stayed was this sense of loyalty.”
In a Life magazine interview after he left office, McNamara (inadvertently) condemned himself. “And he said, ‘well, I stayed because I felt my primary obligation was to serve the President of the United States. I was loyal to the President.’ And the reporter said, but Mr. McNamara, the oath of office: There is a higher calling, is there not, in Washington, if you’re a cabinet member? The oath of office that cabinet members take is to the Constitution. There’s not a word in the oath about the presidency or the office of the presidency. And McNamara brushed that aside.”
His answer was that his loyalty was to the president, not the Constitution!
Philip Taubman pointed to the tragedy embodied in this attitude: “And so he had this distorted view of what was required of him in the office. And when you look back on it, it just seems amazing that he had this distorted view.” Even his own daughter Kathleen distanced herself from him, telling people he was her uncle. Much like Sejanus in ancient Rome, his rise to the top was the cause of his fall. He died in 2009, age 93.
Philip’s final verdict on McNamara is damning: “He was the worst Sec. of Defense we have had.”
McNamara at War: A New History is by W.W. Norton. It lists for $39.99. It is a large tome at nearly 500 pages. It has 16 pages of plates and an extensive notes/bibliography spanning 50 pages. An excellent book about a very flawed public official.
lead photo: McNamara with his wife at left and Jackie Kennedy at right.
Second photo: Philip Taubman at the LBJ Library. Credit: C. Cunningham