Word: mcnamara
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...unpopular but efficient performance in his final year as Secretary of Defense of the U.S., during which he successfully perpetrated his "own" war, I nominate Robert S. McNamara...
Alter Ego. A Yale-educated West Virginian, Vance, 50, arrived on the Washington scene in 1957 to help draft the Space Act, then was chosen as special counsel to the Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee, chaired by L.B.J. After the Democratic accession in 1961, Vance became general counsel to McNamara, moved up to Secretary of the Army a year later. During his 18 months in that post, and later as Deputy Secretary, he supervised the revitalization of the Army and other "cost-effective" reforms as McNamara's discreet alter ego. Vance's health is a limitation in the grinding...
Around Vance swirls a galaxy of other potential successors. Air Force Secretary Harold Brown, 40, a latter-day McNamara "whiz kid," headed Pentagon research and engineering during such McNamaran renovations as the MBT battle tank, the C5A air transport, and the Minuteman II ballistic missile. The current Deputy Secretary, Paul Nitze, 60, is a capable aide but perhaps too old. Johnson might also reach far afield for a successor, tapping such a respected private-sector servant as Charles ("Tex") Thornton, 54, board chairman of Litton Industries and one of the original World War II whiz kids...
...head the war effort before the bitterly contested 1940 election campaign. Indeed, the war seems the major catalyst bearing on Johnson's decision-and raises the question whether Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who after seven years in so demanding a post must be as tired as McNamara, might not also be leaving soon...
Though the President has the utmost trust in Rusk, his departure would allay criticism of the Administration as effectively as McNamara's doubtless will -for awhile. Both are damned by dissidents as architects of the war. The all-purpose candidate for either post might well be former Presidential Adviser McGeorge Bundy, 48. A Republican who worked for Kennedy and Johnson and was tapped for duty by L.B.J. during the Arab-Israeli war last summer, his vigorous voice is still being raised in effective support of Johnsonian policies...