“Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it,” according to George Santayana. According to David Halberstam’s book, The Best and the Brightest – which exposes how the Kennedy and Johnson cabinets of the 1960s handled Vietnam – it may not be so simple. John F. Kennedy’s administration had lofty goals: some of the most educated men in the country sought to redefine the role of the United States on the world stage. Some sought to curtail the arms race, others sought to establish a new, modern “Great Society” back home. Despite their best intentions and their amazingly bright minds, they failed miserably. Although the scholars had many good ideas, they lacked the aptitudes to implement them properly.
“The charts look good,” said Walt Rostow, National Security Advisor to Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1967. Yet despite that claim, the situation in Vietnam was worsening. Those making decisions didn’t have the proper statistics and consequently made incorrect choices. Many Far East experts had been purged from the State department and few individuals with experience in Southeast Asia remained to analyze the events.
Some information was false due to incompetence, other information ignored because decisions makers didn’t want to acknowledge what was happening. The United States viewed the war quantitively (believing their shear numbers advantage would win), rather than qualitively (and acknowledge that the Viet Cong was employing a different type of warfare). Some information was even falsified in order to avoid excessive media coverage. Ironically, when Johnson’s team lied about the true cost of the war, it wasn’t that the country couldn’t afford the higher figure but the fact that he had lie that helped bring him down.
“He’s my intellectual,” said Johnson about Rostow. Johnson was somewhat paranoid about Kennedy’s appointees and how they treated him. Advisors were hired based on the opinions, not their ability to understand a situation. Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, was fired because he opposed an escalation of the bombing in North Vietnam. Aides were reluctant to bring their superiors information that might seem negative or pessimistic.
Throughout the administration, there was widespread refusal to admit wrong and accept weaknesses. Once the conflict escalated, the United States felt reluctant to withdraw because they didn’t want the world to think they were conceding defeat to a Communist country. There was also a reluctance to change and alter a course of action once it had been understand.
To me, a surprising fact was that many of the cabinet came from families that had advised the president a generation before (and some families continued to advise a generation later). Although they claimed not to be political, personal grudges and mistrust permeated the administration.
“The only difference between the Kennedy assassination and mine is that I am alive and it has been more tortuous,” complained Johnson during the 1968 primary season. Halberstam has written a detailed history of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The book covers how people achieved their positions at the time and what happened after it all fell apart. It was not one decision that led to the disaster in Vietnam but many small choices, some made repeatedly.
“All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds Awake to find that it was vanity; But the dreamers of day are dangerous men. That they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible,” recited T.E. Lawrence after World War I. The 660 page chronicle is incredibly fascinating and sometimes depressing. Any leader can learn from this text and improve themselves and their team. Any person could read this, or Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and wonder how the same mistakes are made over and over again, even today.