Word: rogow
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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JAMES FORRESTAL, by Arnold A. Rogow. Except for some weirdly psychoanalytical conclusions, this is a careful biography of the U.S.'s first Secretary of Defense, a brilliant, mercurial man whose drive and ambition were limitless but whose Irish soul floundered in despond...
Talk of Wall Street. Forrestal enjoyed the same rags-to-riches tag that has been pinned on other famous Americans. As is usually the case, writes Rogow, the tag was untrue. Forrestal's father, an Irish immigrant, had built up a prosperous construction business in the town of Matteawan, north of New York City, and was a bigwig in local Democratic politics. It was not poverty but sickness that shaped the young Forrestal. Frail from birth, Forrestal took the Teddy Roosevelt cure. He went in for strenuous exercise, especially boxing. In one bout his nose was broken, giving...
...engineered deals that were the talk of Wall Street. But one of them furnished his enemies with ammunition to use against him in later years. Forrestal set up a bogus Canadian corporation in order to avoid paying some $100,000 in taxes-not an illegal act, writes Rogow, but not a very ethical one, either...
...head to Congress and the press. Better-read than any other Cabinet member and able to quote from Bagehot, Marx and Kant, Forrestal irritated Truman by constantly giving him advice and recommending appointments. "He was a Cabinet Francis Bacon who took the whole political world for his province," writes Rogow. He especially angered Truman by arguing long and hard against the creation of the state of Israel because he thought the U.S. oil supply in the Middle East would be jeopardized...
After writing his solid, careful biography, Rogow attempts some amateur psychoanalysis that does not seem warranted by his own facts. "The reality of Forrestal's personality," he writes, "was not essential toughness but essential weakness." Rogow lists some of the troubles that he thinks eventually crippled Forrestal: his "early psychic deprivation"; his tightly repressed emotions; his compulsive working habits and compulsive play. He suggests that Forrestal, whose feelings toward his father were ambivalent, later transferred these feelings to Harry Truman. Rogow even goes on to suggest what is now fashionable in psychoanalytical and sociological circles: that the cold...