Can anyone imagine McNamara as Secretary of State? He and Harold Wilson would probably get along swimmingly.
I confess I'm in ignorance about some of this. Jimmy Carter? Was it his supreme micromanagement? I'd agree to that. Bill Clinton? The dress? Yup, that too. I haven't spent the last decade on Mars, so I know about Rummy.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.
All that counts is loyalty. Nothing else matters. The more things change...UT2020: McNamara was relieved of his Pentagon post primarily not because of incompetence, but because he became disloyal by late 1967, and LBJ knew it. We all know how LBJ felt on the subject of disloyalty. I think the taped campaign clip was the icing on the cake. Fortunately, LBJ's reaction is not preserved for posterity.
I grew up listening to the government telling me they knew what they were doing and they had everything under control. I have no memory of life before the Vietnam War. In fact, my earliest memories of life coincide about around Tonkin. From my perspective, the war was always just THERE. Like seasons. Things like Tet Offensive and Vietnamization made no impression on my young mind at all. I do remember all the protesting, but my biggest impression of the protests was that they were making no difference at all. The WAR candidates were winning the White House! That's '68, '72, and if I looked it up '64(both). So it actually seemed to me that I would have to go myself. I know that's ridiculous, but I'm taking about a boy 4-12 years old. So yes, on the subject of McNamara, my veins DO start twitching. For damned good reason.Actually, I saw a documentary that provided an answer you might not like. But in any case, that's not the point. I'm more worried about you at this moment.
Do you want some pills or something? There's some veins on your head twitching.![]()
Don't be so sure of that. I'm pretty upset right now.Mac: UT's veins are not as protruded as much as LBJ's veins were when he found out McNamara had been aiding his nemesis.![]()
Douglas: We're forgetting that McNamara was a registered Republican.Unless McNamara pulls a Specter in 1967, the Dems won't nominate him. "I believe that liberals, the bosses, and the labor people would revolt if I tried to cram Bob down their throat."- LBJ, July 1964