SOURCE: NYT
7-8-09
comments powered by Disqus
7-8-09
Philip Bobbitt: McNamara's Compassion
Roundup: Talking About History
[Philip Bobbitt, a law professor at Columbia, is the author, most recently, of “Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century.”]
For Christmas in 1963 we gathered at the ranch that had belonged to my great-grandfather, a few miles outside the town — Johnson City — named for our family.
Lyndon Johnson, my uncle, presided over the noisy feast, and the unwrapping and the prayers. By the fire, that afternoon, he quizzed me on the cabinet he had inherited. I was 15, a high school senior. Could I name all the cabinet members? I could. Did I know which ones were from Wall Street, which ones had served in Congress, which ones had been governors? I did. It went on and on — not so unlike the quizzes he must have given his students 30 years earlier when he coached a high school debate team as a young teacher in Houston.
But now, he said, he had a question that was sure to stump me. Who was the most compassionate member of the cabinet? I guessed, rather unconfidently. Wrong. I guessed again, wrongly. He laughed and said: “You’ll never get it. It’s Bob McNamara. By far.” And it was a surprise, because we all thought of Bob McNamara as the no-nonsense numbers man from corporate America. The steel-rimmed glasses and the steel-trap mind were perfectly suited to an industrial mentality.
...
Read entire article at NYT
For Christmas in 1963 we gathered at the ranch that had belonged to my great-grandfather, a few miles outside the town — Johnson City — named for our family.
Lyndon Johnson, my uncle, presided over the noisy feast, and the unwrapping and the prayers. By the fire, that afternoon, he quizzed me on the cabinet he had inherited. I was 15, a high school senior. Could I name all the cabinet members? I could. Did I know which ones were from Wall Street, which ones had served in Congress, which ones had been governors? I did. It went on and on — not so unlike the quizzes he must have given his students 30 years earlier when he coached a high school debate team as a young teacher in Houston.
But now, he said, he had a question that was sure to stump me. Who was the most compassionate member of the cabinet? I guessed, rather unconfidently. Wrong. I guessed again, wrongly. He laughed and said: “You’ll never get it. It’s Bob McNamara. By far.” And it was a surprise, because we all thought of Bob McNamara as the no-nonsense numbers man from corporate America. The steel-rimmed glasses and the steel-trap mind were perfectly suited to an industrial mentality.
...
comments powered by Disqus
News
- A girl named Greta and the seriously sexist history of Time’s Person of the Year
- Poll: Majority of Democrats think Obama was better president than Washington
- Civil War Soldiers Used Hair Dye to Make Themselves Look Better in Pictures, Archaeologists Discover
- Monumental statue of black man defies Confederate monuments
- From Consensus To Deadlock: Is Impeachment Still A Check On Presidents?
- Black Scholars Respond to Dr. Lorgia García Peña Tenure Denial at Harvard
- Historians Kirsten Weld and Erik Baker Interviewed About Harvard Graduate Worker Strike in Chronicle of Higher Education
- Kate Shaw: Andrew Johnson Was Impeached for Being a Racist Demagogue
- Bullets That Killed John F. Kennedy Immortalized as Digital Replicas by Smithsonian
- 37 books for history lovers: 11 Historians Select Their Favorite Books of 2019