Best and the Brightest. Halberstam.

The Best and the Brightest.
David Halberstam.
New York: Random House, 1972.

The contrast between the Kennedy and LBJ style of leadership.

Best Sentence:
"The [Lyndon] Johnson style was very different [from Kennedy's style], and it made different men of the chief presidential advisors."

"So rather than the previous Administration's [Kennedy's] decision making, where a variety of opinions were sought.... [Johnson]...had an obsession with consensus." LBJ would ask, "What is the vote?"
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Kennedy's men acted rather than waited. "But pragmatic thinking is also short-range thinking...."

Bowles: Kennedy did not so much recognize right from wrong as add up the pluses and minuses and come up with a conclusion.

Harriman on talking to a leader: they have so little time; everyone is always telling them things; keep it short and simple, and brevity above all...one idea, a few brief sentences." Harriman knew the importance of repetition within a government. Kennedy was like the British: Undergo great hardship and stress and never flinch, never show emotion. Too little time to plan, to think; confront most immediate problems and deal with them piecemeal, but quickly as possible.

Foreign policy needs constant reexamination. American people the only ones with a sense of the inevitability of victory. Foreign-service officer who committed to the upper level of the government and society, not to the country itself. American assumption that Diem spoke for the South Vietnamese people. Some thought that the problem in Vietnam was not military but political.

Stillwell wanted to know the truth about the enemy his men were facing because if he didn't have it he would lose men. The worse the news the more he needed it.

Harriman read the book, then called the author in to go over it.

Hard to stop a program that is not working.

McNamara: New business model; highly accountable decentralized units, separate profit-and-loss centers where each executive is held directly responsible and failure could be quickly spotted. McNamara's power was in his knowledge of facts, but some suspected he was using them to support a false assumption. Statistics and facts, two different types of facts. [What is a fact? How many kinds of facts are there? The individual example is a type of fact.]

"F.... up and move up." JFK could no longer believe the reports from the military and was getting his information from the newspapers. JFK did not deal with Vietnam as a political problem. Rusk did not burden his superiors with his problems nor did he question their judgment. Believed that democracies were good and totalitarians were bad. Kennan questioned whether Communism was a monolith. McNaughton used facts and statistics and broke everything down to numbers, but concern with human beings was not part of the calculations. [Cf. Hitler and the Nazi regime and the careful records kept of the slaughter of the Jews.] In time people became unwilling to express doubt.

LBJ bragged that he did not read.

Americans viewed Vietnam with American eyes, as if nothing had happened before America became involved. Bill Moyers did not express doubt himself but encouraged others to express their doubts. Put doubters in touch with each other. Westmoreland saw Vietnamese as Americans; could not see them as themselves. The Viet Cong offset American bombing superiority by closing with American troops and the bombers then could not drop their bombs. First, critics were told that it was not a war and then they were told that the criticism hurt our boys on the firing line. McNamara on The Pentagon Papers: "They could hang people for what's in here." Rostow would pore over the news and find the one or two pieces that were positive. "The body count in ... is marvelous." The Viet Cong's successes never showed; they did not hold terrain but faded into the night.

The Viet Cong were willing to fight one year or twenty-five; it made no difference to them.

The Vietnam War showed the limits of rationalism.