Exposing him would expose the lie that somehow Richard Nixon was responsible for a war started by the guy who beat him, Kennedy, that the war that really got going in 1965 was somehow started by the guy who took office in 1969. So, the media cone of silence was dropped.
Johnson and especially McNamara thought they were way smarter than their military people, shutting out the Joint Chiefs from decision-making on Vietnam. You wonder where the idea came from that the politicians never let the military fight Vietnam to win? McNamara and his micromanaging of the war.
He's also hailed as some kind of charitable genius at the World Bank. But the only countries that emerged from poverty on his watch were the ones NOT developing on World Bank loans, but by freeing their economies and supporting business and export expansion. On the other hand, a lot of dictators in countries getting World Bank loans got really rich.
He is Exhibit A why an off the charts IQ and fine education are not enough to make a wise leader.
The Media is really attracted by the figure of Robert McNamarra. Could it a sort of collective guilt at work? I mean JFK is ‘sainted’, and LBJ would have been ‘great’ if it hadn’t been for Vietnam. Somebody has to be the fall-guy, right?
Not saying that McNamarra wasn’t an arrogant, puffed-up piece of work. He was. But there have been reasonably successful SecDefs who had similar problems.