THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610280192
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JOHN L. DAILEY
LENGTH: 86 lines
THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War
PAUL HENDRICKSON
Alfred A. Knopf. 427 pp. $27.50.
Paul Hendrickson's The Living and the Dead is not an exercise in Robert McNamara bashing, as might be anticipated, and will disappoint those who view the former secretary of defense during the Vietnam years as evil incarnate. Ten years in the making, the book is a careful, even-handed exploration of a complex and tortured figure. Hendrickson paints a softer portrait of McNamara than previously seen.
Which is not to say that the author shies away from scrutinizing McNamara's flaws. He embraces the man's whole character, creating all the tension of a well-crafted novel or a Greek tragedy.
The narrative starts off somewhat slowly, as Hendrickson, a Washington Post reporter, delivers a seemingly scattershot psychoanalytical description of McNamara's childhood. Wisely, he leaves psychological conclusions open, speculating, but not insisting, on possible connections between McNamara's past and his management of the Vietnam War.
From this background, McNamara emerges as a driven, intelligent, wholesome man whose slavish dedication to loyalty and logic eventually brought about his downfall. At the University of California-Berkeley in the 1930s he majored in economics because he loved the certainty of numbers. When President Kennedy lured him from Ford Motor Co. to join the New Frontier, McNamara was a successful bean-counter who had come of age in the heyday of ``control accounting'' at Harvard Business School.
The book takes on more energy when Hendrickson begins to tell the stories of the five people alluded to in the subtitle: . . . Five Lives of a Lost War. These are people whom McNamara never knew but nevertheless influenced, at least indirectly. Their stories are poignant, tragic and, finally, inspirational.
The five subjects suggest the breadth of American life, its psychic individuality and connectedness. They are Jim Farley, a helicopter door gunner; Marlene Kramel, an Army nurse; the anonymous artist who tried to push McNamara to his death one night on a ferry boat; Norman Morrison, the Quaker who immolated himself in 1965 on the Pentagon grounds to protest the war; and the Trans family of South Vietnam, systematically brutalized after the Communist takeover in 1975.
Hendrickson artfully uses these people's lives to illuminate the larger issues of war, peace and politics in a turbulent time. His technique is to establish the identity of each person, then to cut back and forth between that person's life and McNamara's life, now and again noting what each was doing at the same time. By reading these parallel but separate accounts, the reader gets to know and respect each person in a remarkably short time span, and within a historical context.
As interesting as these people are, however, the central theme remains Robert McNamara's image, and whether it was deserved or not. Typically characterized as a coldblooded, aloof, robotic warmonger, McNamara is less so in Hendrickson's treatment. To be sure, he bungled the war through a gradual, bean-counter approach to the use of force. But Hendrickson takes pains to show that there was more to the man than just his numbers.
In his own book, In Retrospect, McNamara admits that he lost faith in the ability of the United States to win the war early on, but continued in office nevertheless. In The Living and the Dead, we find out how long and hard he fought to convince President Johnson to end the fighting. In memo after forceful memo, McNamara described the war as ``dangerous'' and ``costly in lives,'' and said he had ``no will to persist.'' But LBJ continued to reject his advice, and eventually removed McNamara from his post.
Robert McNamara's sin was clear in retrospect: He never went public with his doubts and continued to prosecute the bloody, divisive conflict despite his misgivings. And why did he continue? In his own words: ``I believe that (resigning) would have been a violation of my responsibility to the president and my oath to uphold the Constitution.''
Hendrickson, who did a series of interviews with McNamara in the early 1980s, does a fine job of exploring the elements of McNamara's decision-making. For McNamara, his course was clear and simple, based on duty and loyalty. For the country - as personified by the five lives - his course was tragic and destructive.
The Living and the Dead is a brilliant encapsulation of a traumatic period in U.S. history. It has been nominated for the 1996 National Book Award in non-fiction. MEMO: John L. Dailey is a Navy captain stationed in Norfolk. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Robert McNamara kept misgivings about the Vietnam War private. by CNB