The "Best and The Brightest" were appointed by JFK and also advised LBJ.
McNamara, Rusk, the Bundys, the Rostows, Max Taylor, et al were all instrumental in making a hash of Viet Nam. Would their advice to Kennedy have been any different than it was to Johnson?
McNamara is the one I obsess over. Combined with Johnson, the two of them are probably responsible for at least... well, a lot of the men we lost.
The war should have been fought to win. We should have devastated the north in short order. We played patti-cake instead.
Nixon had the right idea with bombing the north. He could have finally won the thing if Congress had quite interfering.