Great Brains (II)

Democrats are about, as Obama said in his Inaugural, government that works.

Of course, the phrase “best and brightest,” made famous by David Halberstam in his book of that title, drips with irony because it’s about the brains who produced the Vietnam mess. The Woodrow Wilson School’s Julian E. Zelizer is out with a timely warning to the Obama folks to avoid what he calls three big mistakes of the Kennedy era’s “best and brightest”:

1. "Whiz Kid" Robert McNamara [picture] was too certain he could figure out a way to make Vietnam work; his confidence causing him to downplay strong warnings from the military, certain administration officials, and many legislators.

2. Kennedy’s people were too afraid of the political damage Republicans produced in the "Who Lost China" debates of 1952 and 1956 (well, actually not an issue in 1956), so too determined not to lose to Communists again.

3. Kennedy's people were believers in the "imperial presidency," so ignored legislators, such as Georgia's Richard Russell and Idaho's Frank Church, who opposed Vietnam escalations.

Zelizer specifically warns Obama not to ignore the “wisdom of veteran legislators such as Vice President Joe Biden.” That thought alone brings Zelizer’s whole analysis into question. Biden is quickly becoming Obama’s biggest embarrassment—more wiseacre than wiseman.

But back to Kennedy’s “best and brightest.” Their chief failure was ignoring people with Asian experience who knew how difficult it would be to win in the jungles where nationalist hero Ho Chi Minh had vanquished the French a decade earlier. Mike Mansfield, a senator unmentioned by Zelizer, served with the Marines in China and taught East Asian history at the University of Montana. Mansfied was the first U.S. senator (1962) to warn Kennedy the US should avoid further involvement in Vietnam.

McNamara’s doubts about Vietnam show clearly throughout The Pentagon Papers. Beginning in mid-1966, McNamara used his first team, Alain Entoven’s Systems Analysis numbers crunchers, to document that Vietnam was unwinnable—Vietnamese forces had the initiative in 85% of clashes with Americans. While 1966 may seem late, most American deaths in Vietnam occurred after that date.

One big reason European types dominated “best and brightest” decision-making is that the “who lost China” McCarthy-era purges of the State Department left it bereft of China experts. China turning Communist was a tragedy that birthed a second tragedy—waging a costly war in Vietnam without China expertise (see Barbara Tuchman's Pulitzer Prize winning Stilwell and the American Experience in China). Bush made the same mistake in Iraq, avoiding area expertise, until Petraeus took over.

Zelizer somehow misses The Best and Brightest’s chief lesson: listen to folks who speak the language.