Died today. Leaving Donald Rumsfeld now in the unenviable position of longest living , really bad, Secretary of Defense. ( Quote shamelessy stolen from my Canadian counterpart).
Most of the coverage has centered on Vietnam-for which he does deserve a healthy share of criticism. However Vietnam was many years in the making before he arrived and LBJ or a the right words from the right guys could have stopped him.
McNamara’s real legacy lived on long after Vietnam. The Pentagon stopped being able to buy anything well. There were exceptions of course-but the painful process known as PPBS is still with us.
The ghost of McNamara will haunt every discussion where the word-"metrics" are thrown out.
That is how he really harmed the country.
He did do one thing right-McNamara directed the Air Force to adopt the Navy’s F-4 Phantom and A-7 combat aircraft, a consolidation that was quite successful. Imagine if the Air Force had been forced to buy the F-18 E and F, how much better off they would be today. And how much money they could have saved on F-22’s-which could have been used to buy new B-1 bombers.
Update: Detailed NYT Obit here.