McNAMARA - AT 7:49 A.M. ET:  On the day that I received my graduate degree from Columbia University, Robert McNamara, then secretary of defense for John F. Kennedy, was receiving an honorary doctorate.  It was entirely routine in those days for elite universities to honor men associated with national defense.  Most of the people in our universities actually believed in it.  That is not necessarily the case today, although, in fairness, we should point out that Princeton recently had Gen. David Petraeus, who holds a Ph.D. from that university, as a graduation speaker. 

McNamara's death, announced yesterday, has prompted the most detailed and passionate obits of any secretary of defense in memory.  That is due, obviously, to the fact that he's seen, rightly or wrongly, as the prime architect of the Vietnam War.  His death gives the journalistic and academic left a chance to remind us of its glory days opposing that war.  Of course, this crowd will never remind us that, once the North Vietnamese seized South Vietnam, and imposed a total, brutal dictatorship, the so-called "anti-war" movement showed not the slightest interest at all.  Enough lies have been told about Vietnam to keep us for a century.

I never cared for McNamara, who rarely seemed to get the main point of anything.  He was one of those men who intellectualized all subjects to death.  He was the perfect example to illustrate a famous story told about Lyndon B. Johnson.  After attending his first Cabinet meeting as Jack Kennedy's vice president, Johnson rushed to Capitol Hill to consult with his old mentor, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn.  Johnson told Rayburn of his wonder at the assemblage of men he'd just left - from Harvard, Yale, MIT, with all kinds of degrees.  Rayburn thought about it for a moment, then replied soberly, and the exact words differ depending on who's telling it, "Lyndon, I'd feel a lot better if one of them had run for sheriff."

Those were days when it was thought by some that every problem had an intellectual solution, that running for sheriff was for the lesser classes, that practical experience was a way out for those with average college board scores.  If you're getting the sense that you're seeing a sequel today, you're right.  The Obama administration has much the same character:  We are omnipotent because we are smart, because we know how to reason, because we speak well.

For two somewhat rough, but, I think, accurate assessments of McNamara, check Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal here, and Jonathan Tobin at Contentions here.

July 7, 2009