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THE MYTHS ABOUT
McNAMARA
By MARK R. KILLINGSWORTH
Washington
SECURITY depends on far more than
military power, but Congress some-
times closes its eyes to that fact. They
recently added $1 billion to Defense De-
partment appropriations, believing that
they thereby are buying more security.
But we're beyond the point of incremental
gain on military expenditures-while we'-
re not beyond that point for non-military
expenditures."
The man spoke to his Ann Arbor visi-
tor in a voice which suggested very clear-
ly that his conclusion could only have
come from the most careful calculation of
the "incremental gains" to which he re-
ferred. There is, indeed, nothing sur-
prising or unusual about the conclusion-
except that the man who pronounced it
is the Secretary of Defense of the United
States.
Robert S. McNamara has always been
controversial. From the IFX and Sky-
bolt programs to the greater integration
of the armed services, McNamara's ef-
forts have been surrounded by debate.
Each program is a major national de-
fense issue; controversy over such im-
portant policy decisions is to some extent
inevitable.
BUT McNAMARA has recently become
controversial for an entirely new set
of issues.
Four terse paragraphs-inserted almost
at the last moment in a speech McNamara
gave in Montreal in May-sparked inten-
se discussion on non-military alternatives
to the draft.
Several brief McNamara comments
about dissent, at spring commencements
at Amherst, New York University and
Chatham College, came in sharp contrast
to President Johnson's references to "Ner-
vous Nellies" and added a refreshing per-
spective on "the freedom of dissent."
A single McNamara speech in August
announcing a program to help 100,000
men each year meet Selective Service
physical and mental standards revived old
criticisms of a "Moron Corps" and promp-
tecU concern that the military might take
over education in this country.
Pentagon aides insist that these are is-
sues which a Secretary of Defense is per-
fectly entitled to discuss, that they are
clearly related to matters within his jur-
isdiction. But McNamara's statements on
these issues have prompted "The Wall
Street Journal" to schedule an article on
what its prospective writer calls the "non-
Pentagon McNamara."
McNamara's statements moved James
Reston of "The New York Times" to
comment that McNamara had opened up
will, or should, be debated seriously on
Capitol Hill and in the newspapers and
on the university campuses long after he
is gone."
THIS REPORTER had an unusually
frank interview last month with Mc-
Namara in which the Secretary elaborat-
d on his comments-which will indeed
be debated seriously on university cam-
puses if only because so many of them
are directly relevant to their students
and faculties. McNamara's statements
and his elaboration on them in this in-
terview suggest that while a "new" Mc-
Namara may not have been born, some
old myths about him can be laid to rest
-and that the realities reflect a remark-
ibly broad and deep human being.
As an assistant professor of business
improve their physical condition, and
thereby "salvage tens of thousands of
men . . . first for productive military ca-
reers and later for productive roles in so-
ciety."
The speech aroused some Congressional
criticism because a similar 1964 Penta-
gon proposal had been rejected by the
Congress-and here was McNamara in
1966 announcing a later variant of it.
More intense criticism came from such
,disparate personalities as Barry Goldwa-
ter and Fred M. Hechinger, education
editor of The New York Times, who both
raised fears that the Pentagon's attempt
to make up for the failures of the pub-
lic schools had strong overtones of a
military takeover of American education.
Ironically, the refutation to Messrs.
Goldwater and Hechinger is in McNa-
"But the image of McNamara as a bomb-happy Mac the
Knife,' according to informed observers, is far from the real-
ity. One assistant, declining to discuss his chief's feelings on
the war in Viet Nam in detail, would only say, in a soft,
voice, that McNamara is 'careful ... cautious . . and very
concerned' and that the Mac the Knife' image is 'the farthest
possible thing from the truth.' . . . Under-Secretary of State
George Ball, according to highly reliable sources, has been
telling friends that McNamara was the major force behind
the second pause in U.S. bombings of North Viet Nam early
this year."
"some fundamental questions, and these
administration at Harvard from 1940-
1943, a resident of Ann Arbor in the 19-
30's and a fairly active speaker on the
.ommencement circuit, McNamara has
had continuing contact with education
ind educators-contact which he thinks
is extremely valuable.
Says an assistant, "An academic set-
ting is one in which he's at his best -
I've seen him in it, and it's great to
watch." This interest in education - for
itself and for its talent - has been close-
ly bound up in the "new" issues he has
been discussing.
ON THE MORNING of August 25 Secre-
tary McNamara strode to the plat-
form of the Veterans of Foreign Wars
convention, denounced poverty in Ameri-
ca for making America less secure, and
announced that the Defense Department
would thereafter accept 100,000 men an-
nually who currently are unable to qual-
ify for the selective service. The program
would, he said, upgrade their skills and
mara's speech itself: the armed services
provide professional training for 65,000
officers and sponsor correspondence
schools for a million students; the De-
fense Department runs 327 dependents'
schools for 166,000 students; the Armed
Forces Institute has 258,000 students cur-
rently enrolled in studies from graduate
school level to college. All in all, McNa-
mara noted, the Defense Department al-
ready "is the largest single educational
complex that the world has ever possess-
ed"-and it does not seem that an addi-
tional 100,000 students added to it will
have the effect some fear it would.
ET McNAMARA'S most interesting
comments in the speech were not
the announcement of the new "salvage"
program but his description of the effect
poverty has on educational achievement.
"There is now ample evidence that many
aptitude evaluations have less to do with
how well the student can learn than with
the cultural value-system of the educa-
tor," he said. "We have already discov-
ered, within the Department of Defense,
that the prime reason many men 'fail'
the aptitute tests given at the time of
induction is simply that these tests are
geared to the psychology of traditional,
formal, classroom, teacher-paced instruc-
tion."
McNamara added, ". . . these tests in-
evitably reflect the cultural value-systems
and verbal patterns of affluent American
society. That is why so many young men
from poverty backgrounds do poorly in
the test. It is not because they do not
possess basic-and perhaps even brilliant
-intelligence; but simply because their
cultural environment is so radically dif-
ferent from that assumed by the test-
designers.
"It is, for example, a generally-accepted
value of American society to want to
achieve' something in life. That is a
sound value; but it is a value many
young people from poverty-encrusted en-
vironments simply have not been exposed
to. In their world, achievement is seldom
advanced as a value, only because it does
not exist as a realistic possibility."
McNamara's examination of poverty
has, in fact, changed his opinion of its
influence. "I'm not as concerned as I was
a decade ago about the effect of income
n college attendance. I'm much more con-
cerned that income has such major ef-
fects on grammar school and high school
attendance and performance," he says.
"There are two states where 70 percent
of the Negroes can't pass our draft tests
-that's largely a function of income lev-
els."
F McNAMARA'S concern about primary
and secondary education has grown
over the years, his interest in universities
has scarcely diminished.
McNamara feels that universities "can't
stand aside from issues-the students
and the professors are often among the
best-informed on policy questions"-and
he praises the role men like Felix Frank-
furter of Harvard played in involving stu-
dents and faculty in national issues in the
1930's. "They were participants in decid-
ing policy, and they were well-suited to
do so," McNamara comments.
Indeed, McNamara believes strongly
that students should take a greater part
in public affairs. "We lived in Ann Ar-
bor in the fifties, during the McCarthy
period," he recalls, "and we could see the
dampening effect that it had on partici-
pation in public affairs-it affected not
only students, but faculty members, too."
But he feels times'have changed-for the
better. "It's disturbing to see the irre-
sponsible criticism that comes from some
of the young. But it's very encouraging to
see their greatest interest in national and
international affairs."
AND McNAMARA adds: "The greatest
criticism I have of the young is that
not enough are interested in national and
international affairs-and that some are
so poorly informed on what they're talk-
ing about. But my basic point is that
there's much greater interest in these is-
sues, and I hope that can be encouraged."
As a frequent speaker at college com-
mencecents-McNamara spoke in Ann
Arbor in 1962-McNamara has recently
observed the younger generation's "great-
er interest" in public affairs at first-hand,
and not always under the most pleasant
circumstances: In the space of less than
a week this spring, faculty and students
at New York University and Amherst
walked out as he was awarded honorary
degrees, and when he addressed the gra-
duating class at Chatham College-which
included one of his two daughters-he
was picketed.
But McNamara's Chatham speech - a
rambling and somewhat whimsical com-
parison of present relations between
young people and their elders with the
way they were in the middle ages and in
Plato's time - had some comments on
student protest which must have surpris-
ed the picketers. "There IS a serious di-
inension to the protest among some stu-
dents today," he said; and while "some
of the extremist-protest" may be comfort-
ing Hanoi, we should "be perfectly clear
about our principles and our priorities.
This is a nation in which the freedom of
dissent is absolutely fundamental."
McNAMARA RECENTLY elaborated on
this, too, and his feelings about
student protest and the right to dissent
are refreshing. "I don't think we can
have a democracy without dissent," he
says, almost as if he were pronouncing
the obvious. "The idea of dissent is in-
herent in a democracy. We can't expect
anything other than that different peo-
ple will have different views, and that
those views will conflict."
He does stress, however, that dissenters
ought to know the facts, which he feels
quite strongly. "In my meetings with stu-
dents I've been amazed how little some of
them knew. If they had any conception
of the issues involved, they might not
change'their minds about them-but you
have a duty to master the issues before
you discuss them."
McNamara is tolerant of dissent and
even maintains that, while irresponsible
Viet Nam dissent "does damage us," the
damage is "no greater than irresponsible
discussion of any other major issue."
But he also stresses the value of res-
ponsible dissent-because, he feels, when
dissent is responsible, "it adds because it
informs. Some dissent has been irrespon-
sible because it's ill-informed." McNa-
mara feels, for example, that most criti-
cisms of President Johnson's Viet Nam
policy simply fail to take into account
the numerous peace initiatives the Presi-
dent has conducted.
~ONCLUDING a long summary of its
- drawbacks and disadvantages, McNa-
mara says that uninformed debate "can
even stop action on a plausible proposal
by presenting such a weak case for it that
it dies earlier than it deserves."
Informed debate, then, is something
McNamara believes very deeply in as a
productive element in national decision-
making: "We should protect the right to
dissent, even to irresponsible dissent. But
I do emphasize that informed debate pro-
duces far more progress-and I don't
think that informed people will always
have the same opinions."
But McNamara's Chatham speech dealt
not only with dissent, but also by impli-
cation with the New Left's oft-expressed
fears that technology, bureaucracy and
complex organization are destroying the
concept of participatory democracy and
are alienating modern man himself."
McNamara disagrees. Arguing that
problems have been arising more rapidly
than man's ability to cope with them,
McNamara declared: "It is possible that
some of our gravest problems in society
arise not out of overmanagement; but
precisely out of undermanagement. It is
possible that democracy can become non-
participatory precisely to the degree that
organic and hierarchial management
breaks down." He mentioned urbanization
as just one of many problems which do
not test our capacity for reducing organ-
ization but for improving it.
McNamara's thesis: Management of our
problems is a very real form of participa-
tion in democracy. The clear implication
is that it should be both the-responsibility
and the opportunity of young people to
help restore participatory democracy and
to attack our problems by' getting invol-
ved in their management.
W ITH BURKE MARSHALL'S Advisory
Commission on the Selective Service
preparing to make a major set of recom-
mendations on the draft, McNamara does
not want to discuss possible ways to im-
plement his May 18 Montreal proposal
that the government "move toward" re-,
medying the "inequity (of the draft) by
asking every young person in the United
States to give two years of service to his
country-whether in one of the military
services, in the Peace Corps or in some
volunteer developmental work at home or
abroad."
But he will explain a remark he made
in 1965 to a group of returned Peace
Corps volunteers-"We have three and
three-quarters million people in the De-
fense Department today but I doubt very
much that we have influenced the peace
of the world as much as the small hand-
ful of you in this room and your col-
leagues have."
"Security," he explains, "is much more
than military strength-military hard-
ware of which we have almost too much.
Security depends not only on -our mili-
tary strength, but on our relations with
other countries."
THERE ARE three major groups of
countries, McNamara said in Mon-
treal: "Those who might be tempted to
take up arms against us," nations "who
can and should share international peace-
keeping responsibilities," and the develop-
ing nations. 'The greatest possible guar-
antee of our security is greater stability
cold, that he is an insensitive technician.
"It's been a delightful and inspiring ex-
perience," one close associate said recent-
ly of his work. "He's absolutely the most
pleasant and direct person I've known,
and he completely lacks any stuffiness."
The aide knew whereof he spoke. As an
associate recalls the story, the aide got an
invitation to go sailing to Florida for a
week with a friend. The aide was eager
to go, but said he didn't think he should
take the time from his job. The friend
mentioned this to McNamara, whereupon
McNamara called his aide to tell him if
he didn't take the opportunity he, Mc-
Namara, wouldn't take his customary
week off at Christmas. The aide finally
agreed, his associate adds.
"It is perhaps ironic that a former president of the Ford
Motor Co. who became Secretary of Defense would gain the
greatest opposition fron the so-called imilitary-industrial com-
plex,' but that is the way matters have worked out, from
anonymous Pentagon officers to General .Nathan Twining's
recent blast. McNa-nara concluded his interview with this
correspondent by conceding that a problem in running the
Defense empire 'is the constant harrassment of the one who
makes a decision if that decision is opposed to powerful
parochial interests.'"
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Despite his silence on ways to imple-
ment the national service plan, McNa-
mara emphasizes that there are presently
ample opportunities for participation in
public affairs, not only in voluntary ser-
vice but work for government and private
agencies," and notes his daughter Mar-
garet will be a salaried worker for the
New Haven, Conn., poverty program this
fall. He adds that national service falls in
the broad category of non-military ef-
forts like development aid, along with in-
creased contacts with the Communist
Chinese and the. East European countries
and disarmament negotiations, where -
unlike military expenditures-"we're not
beyond the point of incremental gain for
our expenditure."
THE NATURE of the human being be-
hind the public figure is almost as
controversial a subject as his public acti-
vities. But McNamara is a human being,
those who know him insist.
They scoff at the familiar charges that
he is a computer, that he is abrasive and
Adam Yarmolinsky-who many feel
was closest to McNamara during his stint
in the Pentagon and is now about to start
teaching at Harvard Law School - en-
countered McNamara's concern at hear-
ing he had been involved in a serious
automobile accident. McNamara and his
wife Margaret came at once to the hos-
pital and stayed with Yarmolinsky and
his wife through the night.
QTHER FRIENDS and associates have
a similar, seemingly inexhaustable
personal fund of such vignettes, ranging
from McNamara's delight in playing cha-
rades to his marathon conversation with
Robert Lowell-until 5 a.m.-whom he
had just met for the first time at a party
given by the Paul Mellons.
But with his charm and feeling for
people go a vast amount of intellectual
curiosity and energy. As Prof. Paul Mc-
Cracken of the business administration
school-who has known McNamara since
his early days with the Ford Motor Co.-
puts it: "He's not the kind of guy who
will spend hours reconstructing the after-
noon's football game at the party after-
wards."
In mid-1965, McNamara explains new Viet Nam develop-
ments to newsmen. He leaves today on his eighth trip there in
five years.
Page Four
THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1966