Word: mcnamara
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ally and adversary alike, Robert Strange McNamara has always seemed a man of diamond-hard will and titanium physique. When his forthcoming departure from the Pentagon was announced last week, it seemed almost as if the Washington Monument had toppled from marble fatigue...
...McNamara ruled the Defense Department longer and more efficiently than any of his seven predecessors, constructing the world's most powerful nuclear arsenal while fighting a limited war in Viet Nam and a seemingly limitless conflict with hard-nosed generals and fractious legislators at home. His administrative reforms became a model for other department chiefs while he performed a multiplicity of miscellaneous chores for the President. There was talk of his becoming Secretary of State, or perhaps czar of domestic programs and, in 1964, Vice President. In the years since, his tenure had become an American institution...
...Secretary would soon leave his post for the relative backwater of the World Bank's presidency, the shock waves were felt around the world.† Given the morose mood of the moment, it was also understandable that many should reach the instant conclusion that Lyndon Johnson had dismissed McNamara out of hand, presumably to appease the generals whom the Secretary had held in check, and as a prelude to a wider war in Asia. Columnist Mary McGrory mourned "the last human barrier within the Government against the harsh and drastic steps recommended by the generals." Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said...
Bismarckicm Parallel. Between the time that news tickers carried the first word to Washington on Monday afternoon and the public confirmation on Wednesday evening, McNamara's reassignment had been inflated into a palace revolution comparable to Kaiser Wilhelm II's dismissal of Otto von Bismarck in 1890, partly because the Iron Chancellor had opposed his sovereign's militant foreign policy...
...McNamara's much-ballyhooed computer efficiency and the extraordinary attention he gave to his department, he also influenced the operations of the entire Executive branch more than any of this predecessors. He spearheaded President Kennedy's drive for the 1963 nuclear test-ban treaty, decried the refusal of the rich nations to expedite the development of the poor ones, and was a behind-the-scenes force in federal civil rights and poverty planning. In short, he felt that American defense consisted of more than nuclear hardware, and American prosperity more than a high growth rate and stable price index...