If you spent an hour too long watching your favorite Michael Jackson videos the last few days, you might have missed the death of a political giant.

Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Kennedy, and briefly Johnson, died two days ago. One of the most powerful men in the world during the 60’s died at the age of 93. The news world only took perfunctory notice. Was Bob Fawcetted?

For decades to come, Farrah Fawcett will be remembered fondly for her impact on pop culture. Secretly, however, many will remember her for being outshined by the King of Pop. A few hours after her death, Michael Jackson took over everyone’s air time and headlines, and by the end of the week it was still all about him (it possibly still is). Farrah Fawcett became a footnote in our pop consciousness. If only she had waited a little while longer.

Now McNamara has fallen under the same condition. Instead of having a pop icon eclipse his memorial, it was a governor from up north. Sarah Palin’s resignation puzzled, enraged, and intrigued us right before we headed toward some BBQ and fireworks. Coming back to our work week we were still wondering why the girl from Wasilla called it quits?

“Oh yeah, some guy from the Kennedy administration died–so, anyway, do you think it’s because she is gonna run in 2012?”

Barely today, two days after his death, have true reactions come afloat.

A conversation between Gail Collins and David Brooks steers away from McNamara and goes into more philosophical ground (as is Brooks’ cup of tea). Some anecdotes sprinkle the Boston Globe’s obit, but they flatten the man more than eulogize him. In all, the man who sculpted our foreign policy for decades, who engineered a new language, based off of military movements and diplomatic smoke signals, who was a pragmatic architect, and later a tortured defector, of the Vietnam War, was given less attention than the rambling resignation of an Alaskan governor.

Although I thought the man was wrong in trying to run the Department of Defense like a Ford factory (his former employer), treating body counts like inventory, strategy like business forecasts, and war like a negotiation amongst a board of directors, the man was a immensely talented. Kennedy considered him the “smartest man I ever knew.” McNamara had the confidence of a successful CEO, which he brought to his new desk, even though he once admitted he couldn’t tell the difference between a nuclear war head and a station wagon upon arriving to Washington.

After crafting and launching the blueprint for the Vietnam War with President Johnson, he felt increasingly at odds with his brainchild. The combination of a lack of confidence in the war’s purpose, and the suspicion by Johnson that McNamara was secretly siding with potential Democratic presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy for the ‘68 election, sent McNamara to the World Bank. He joked that he wasn’t sure if he quit or was fired. He would cease to reside in the White House, but the ghosts of Vietnam never left him.

It is told that he would roam the streets of DC, with an untucked shirt and worn tennis shoes, shuffling around with a sunken face. Whenever someone would recognize him and want to shake his hand, he flinched. He was haunted by what he helped create. In the engrossing documentary, The Fog of War, McNamara sort of gives an outline of why he went the wrong way. “Empathize with your enemy,” McNamara says in the documentary. It was a veiled apology, hoping we wouldn’t commit the same mistakes.

It’s difficult to understand the pressure one must feel when thousands of lives are attributed to our follies. Unlike Michael Jackson or Farrah Fawcett who lived public and often criticized lives, the damamge they claimed to have inflicted, in one way or another, pale in comparison to McNamara’s. An entire war and its consequences was laid on this genius’ head.

And he was Fawcetted by the former Mayor of Wasilla, AK?

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• Humanity is not Numerical

Tags:   robert mcnamara · vietnam war1 Comment