POD 1955. No WWIII or everyone preceding him in the OTL line of succession being killed or otherwise removed from office.
With the exception of OTL Dubya, I cannot imagine ANY POTUS less likely to take advice and more likely to keep his own council. He was (IS) the living definition of the armchair general (and admiral). During the Cuban Missile Crisis he, the Secretary of Defense, was in the Pentagon ordering about individual destroyers as if he were a US Navy Rear Admiral. It got to the point he was giving direct orders to individual ship captains. If ever you could see Vietnam coming over the horizon, this was it. What the HELL does a car manuafacterer know about naval warfare? He was brought in to improve the structure of the Pentagon and improve efficiency, not play Lord Nelson. Remind you of a certain SecDef being escorted out of the White House 4 years ago?POD 1955. No WWIII or everyone preceding him in the OTL line of succession being killed or otherwise removed from office.
POTUS Karl Rove TL? Sorry, but that belongs in the ASB Forum along with the POTUS TL's for Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Richard Mellon-Scaife, Rupert Murdoch, Lucianne Goldberg, Jonah Goldberg, Sarah Palin, Linda Tripp, Tucker Carlson, Bey Buchanan, Matt Drudge, and absolutely EVERYONE named Bush.Re nightmares: you could at least wait for a possible POTUS Karl Rove TL.But I'm very patient. Coming back to my OP: one possibility discussed in 1963 was moving McNamara to Foggy Bottom and Bobby to the Pentagon. There are few men who that building despised more than the two Roberts in the Kennedy Administration. Apart from Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Rummy.
What the HELL does a car manuafacterer know about naval warfare?
Only if HE was the one to come up with the idea for switching from high-level (30,000ft) daylight HE bombing to mid-level (9,000ft) night time incendiary bombing. If not, then it's just another in a long list of McNamara screwups.Note: he did have one large difference from Rumsfeld in that he served in the military during an active war. One could make a very good argument that the strategic bombing campaign in Japan was in no small part out of his noggin.
Only if HE was the one to come up with the idea for switching from high-level (30,000ft) daylight HE bombing to mid-level (9,000ft) night time incendiary bombing. If not, then it's just another in a long list of McNamara screwups.![]()
Peter Principle to the nth degree. The difference between McNamara and Quayle? Quayle knew he'd reached his level of incompetence, no later than the Bentson debate. No one could McNamara his job. He's telling Maxwell Taylor the missiles in Cuba don't materially affect our defense posture with the Soviets!No.
McNamara was underqualified for the job. He was the very definition of a guy who had no idea what he was doing most of the time. The Ford Edsel was his idea (and it flopped badly, costing Ford an estimated $250 million - in 1958 dollars), and his time as SecDef, well, he got the US into Vietnam, which should be bad enough......
As a car guy, I hate the man. As a history guy, I think the man got WAY too far for his intelligence level.