Medford mail tribune., July 22, 1962, Image 38

Out of the West (by way of
Harvard and Detroit)
came Robert S. McNamara,
a thinking man who packs
a fast computer and the
Pentagon hasn't been
the same since
By CURTIS MITCHELL
Twenty-FOUR HOURS after John F.
Kennedy, 43, was elected President
of the United States, a relatively un
known young man, Robert Strange Mc
Namara, 44, was elected to the presi
dency of the Ford Motor Co. They had
never met.
Five weeks later, Kennedy offered the high
saluried (more than $500,000 a year) Mc
Namara a $25,000 job as Secretary of Defense,
a post which its first occupant, James V. For
restal, called "a cemetery for dead cats."
McNamara thought about it for seven days;
then he accepted, amid the misgivings of crit
ics who preferred a "name" for the job.
Now, more than a year and a half later, the
moon-faced young man in the gold-rimmed
glasses has become a world figure and the re
cipient of widespread acclaim.
"McNamara is the most outstanding Secre
tary of Defense ever to hold that office he is
unique," says Rep. Carl Vinson, chairman of
the House Armed Forces Committee.
"He is an IBM machine on legs," says Sen.
Barry Goldwater.
The public is pleased by such praise but it
also is a little perplexed. Can McNamara be
that good? In looking for the answer, first con
sider the size of his job. .
McNamara runs an establishment that spends
more than $-18 billion each year, more than the
combined national budgets of Great Britain,
France, West Germany, and Italy. He is "the
boss" of 2'2 million servicemen and one million
civilian employees of the Defense Department.
Second, consider the unusual way he meets
the problems of this huge establishment.
As soon as he took office, McNamara was
faced with such major questions as: Should we
cancel the atomic plane? Add more Polaris
subs? Junk our aircraft carriers? Abolish the
National Guard? True to his already-established
form, he broke the problems down into
131 categories and ordered task-force studies.
When the task forces reported, McNamara
and his aides ran the findings through Pentagon
computers and began to take action. They de
cided that the most pressing need was to build
up U. S. deterrent power to a point where it would
protect us against any surprise attack. Despite
the ensuing eruption in the Pentagon, which has
been described as "bone-shaking," McNamara
pressed toward his goal..
One thing about McNamara, he likes to make
decisions. He detests inaction. Years ago, he
Family Weekly. July 22. 1962
T
McNamara dazzles colleagues with his ca
pacity for absorbing and retaining acts.
The Defense chief calls it a day. He's
up at 6:45, puts in 12-18 hours on job.
1
Willi Gen. Lyman Lemnilzer, chairman of
joint chiefs of staff, he maps strategy
family WeeklyJ Jn
III 22, 1UB2
MR. FACTS
vowed he would attend to every personal deci
sion within seven days, and he has done so.
Old-fashioned sincerity seems to guide his
every action. When he was called in to talk to
President-elect Kennedy in 19G0, he knew he
was being judged for a high position. But he
felt that he, too, had to make a judgment. He
had read JFK's book, "Profiles in Courage,"
and he was impressed. But he also had heard
rumors that the book was "ghosted" by histo
rian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. So McNamara
bluntly asked Mr. Kennedy: "Sir, did you write
the book yourself?"
The President-elect explained that he had
been helped with the research but that "the
writing is my own!" From that day on, the two
men were on the same wave length.
McNamara's old friends are not surprised
that such a neophyte in politics walks so con
fidently through the booby traps of Washing
ton. His exceptional intelligence and executive
ability help him in this regard. But another im
portant factor is his private life, which is an
chored to the solid foundation of his family
his wife Margaret, their daughters Margaret
Elizabeth, 20, and Kathleen, 17, and their son
Robert Craig, 11.
A Program of Togetherness
The McNamaras spend summer vacations
camping together and winter holidays skiing
together. Between times, they climb mountains
together, of course.
At home, they read books by the score. It was
by choice, not chance, that McNamara and his
family lived in Ann Arbor, Mich., a university
town, rather than fashionable Grosse Pointe,
when he was with Ford.
In Washington, the McNamara home is a
Spanish-accented house with five bedrooms and
baths. The day begins for the Secretary of De
fense when his alarm rings at 6:45. He rises
easily, even eagerly. Nowadays, he skips calis
thenics, except when he is toughening himself
for a ski tour or for mountaineering. As often
as possible, he sits down to a family breakfast.
The talk usually is about books or sports.
After skimming the news off the New York
Times, McNamara dashes out to the chauffeured
government Cadillac waiting at the curb.
He begins each workday by performing a
unique drill. He thinks. Thinking is a labor for
which he requires silence. In Detroit, he kept
the first 5)0 minutes of each morning inviolate,
and he tries to do the same now.
During his thinking period, McNamara sits
and stares or paces restlessly or probes
through pages of facts which, in his lexicon, are
the tools for solving an organization's problems.
Thousands of such facts are compressed into a
personal library of thick, black books marked
SECRET, which lie on his desk most workdays.
The target of many McNamara "quiet hours"
is the 550 points into which he originally di
vided the Defense Department's spending ac-
TAKES WASHINGTON
tivities. His mastery of these facts enables him
to put on such remarkable performances as his
appearance before a Congressional committee
last year. He had been asked to amplify his
request for naval funds. And he did so by
throwing 240 typewritten pages at the Con
gressmen and talking for 11 straight days. Dur
ing that time, he named the cost and mission
of every ship in the program.
"He left us exhausted, dazzled, and satiated,"
a tired witness recalls.
McNamara's fact-backed personality creates
an effect all the more devastating because it
surprises people. His physique is lean but un
impressive. His hair is slicked back and parted
in the fashion of 30 years ago. As one Congress
man said: "McNamara looks like a small-town
insurance agent."
But action transforms him. Walking, he lopes.
Standing, he shuffles and teeters. At a con
ference table,' he crouches to make a point, his
smallish face turning mobile and dramatic as
figures pour from his brain. He listens, too
jotting endless notes with his left hand.
But McNamara is not all push, push, push!
At times, he will excuse himself, jump into
his personal car (a Ford), and drive to a grassy
field at Sidwell Friends School, where for an
hour he is the proud father whose love and sup
port are needed by a young athlete named Bob.
Night life for McNamara usually means work
(he devotes 12 to 18 hours a day to his job),
but he sometimes gets a chance to cut loose.
Last winter, he attended a private party
at the White House and danced till 4:30 a.m.
Insiders report that the best twisting of the
evening took place when the Secretary of De
fense danced with the First Lady.
Go East, Young Man
The McNamara story began in California,
where Robert's Irish father settled down and
married a Scotch-English lass, Clara Nell
Strange. Bob was a precocious boy. He could
read like a 13-year-old when he entered first
grade. At the University of California, he was
elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his sophomore
year. Summers, the independent-minded youth
shipped out on freighters to the Orient.
After the University of California, McNa
mara moved east to Harvard, where he won a
master's degree with one of the highest aca
demic records in the history of the School of
Business Administration. In Cambridge, the
young Westerner became immersed in the prin
ciples of statistical control that were then be
ginning to change the face of industry. He ab
sorbed the new methods enthusiastically.
Harvard offered McNamara an assistant pro
fessorship in 1940 and with it a degree of
financial security that made marriage possible.
So he put in a telephone call to Margaret Craig,
an attractive brunette he had met in his under
graduate days. She wasn't at her home in Cali
fornia, but he finally reached her at a Y.W.C.A.
THE MEN
in Baltimore. Margaret accepted his proposal
from a telephone booth.
"I've always wanted to go to Baltimore and
see that booth," McNamara mused recently.
Soon after Pearl Harbor, he was turned down
for military service because of nearsightedness.
But after a time, the Air Force waived his vis
ual handicap and made him a captain, then a
major, and at 28 a lieutenant colonel.
After the war, he was preparing to return to
his teaching job when an Air Force colonel got
an idea that changed the course of his life. The
colonel put the talents of McNamara and nine
other young Air Force statisticians into one
J
I McNamara gave up top Ford post to join
I cabinet. Here he meets with President.
Zn South Vietnam, the Secretary inspects
local troops with Col. Nugycn Quoc Hoang.
Mrfe )
Bob McNamara isn't all work. He and wife H
Margaret attend a formal ball in capital. H
WHO DECIDE OUR DESTINIES
package and offered them "for sale" to Ameri
can industrial firms. Somebody snidely dubbed
them the Whiz Kids, but a number of companies
showed serious interest. Of these, Ford made
the best offer. So the McNamaras moved to De
troit, and the academic world lost a professor.
At the time, Ford was afflicted with growing
pains and a multitude of other problems which the
Whiz Kids attacked with zest. After only three
years, McNamara became company controller.
Soon he was influencing decisions about produc
tion and fighting for safety belts and the 12,000
mile guarantee. He gave the already-successful
Thunderbird two more seats and tripled its sales.
He moved the compact Falcon into production
and saw it get off to a fast start, outstripping all
competition in its class.
In 1960, he reached Ford's peacock throne, .
the presidency. Five weeks later, he was called
to Washington.
Brickbats Amid the Plaudits
Today the majority opinion in Washington
seems to be that McNamara has proved himself
a brilliant, dedicated, and incorruptible public
servant. Walter Lippmann, the distinguished
newspaper columnist, summed up this attitude
recently when he said: "McNamara is the
ablest man ever to come to the Pentagon."
But there is a minority opinion, too, expressed
for the most part by disgruntled members of
the military hierarchy.
One high officer worries about his haste in
"running everything through the computer."
Noting that the machine's findings are right
only when it is fed relevant information, he
adds : "I don't think he asks the right questions."
Another official, whose memory encompasses
earlier Secretaries of Defense, says: "I sure wish
we had those dumb guys back."
The McNamara weakness, if it is a weakness,
is that he is a loner. In backslapping Washing
ton, this is often a good way to win enemies and
antagonize people.
The McNamara strength is that he is a man of
thought dedicated to action. "I see my position as
being that of a leader, not a judge," he says. "I'm
here to originate and stimulate new ideas and
programs using deliberate analysis to force
alternative programs to the surface and then
making explicit choices among them."
As a result of McNamara's efforts, we are well
on our way toward a formidable atomic submar
ine fleet, a widely dispersed underground missile
complex, and a vastly expanded troop air-transport
system. He feels we are no longer outgunned
and that our strength has become a powerful
deterrent to any but an insane enemy. He says:
"We are strong enough militarily to survive
nny atomic attack, to strike back and completely
destroy the enemy, and to withstand whatever
blackmail threats a second power might make."
Listening, the free world rests a little easier,
for it knows that in Moscow and Pciping they,
too, can hear the music of McNamara's band.
Family Weekly, July 22, 1K2 1