@thanatokephaloides

This does, however, pose the problem of how to have candidates for an election. Maybe some kind of "citizens draft" whereby someone is chosen at random from (a reasonable selection of) the public to serve one term and then leave?

#2.2.1.1

Generally however, most who seek the top office have egos such that they feel that all the country needs is their sure hand and ability sitting in the Oval Office.

There's a centuries-old tradition which states that anyone who wants to be Pope is automatically, ipso facto, unfit to hold the office.

As voters, perhaps we ought to maintain a similar view of the Presidency?

@leveymg part right. Berkeley grad who later went to do some things at Harvard.

Dunno where your cite is from, which I'd be happy to look at further if I had a link, but it's misleading to suggest McN was either dictating policy to Lyndon or misleading him about the Gulf of Tonkin.

On overall policy -- it's quite clear from at least NSAM 273, which using subtle language reversed JFK's NSAM 263 which formally began the policy of withdrawal of military advisers, that Johnson was staying in Nam and would be making more of a military commitment there.

Clear too is who is in charge -- in an unmistakable phone call with his SecDef in Feb '64, cold warrior LBJ, a firm believer in the Domino Theory, lays down the law to McNamara on not abandoning the military effort in VN (hearing the actual call is even more striking as to LBJ dictating orders to McN):

McNamara
[Pauses.] Yeah, the problem is what to say about it.

President Johnson
All right—I’ll tell you what I would say about it. [Unclear comment by McNamara] I would say that we have a commitment to Vietnamese freedom. Now, we could pull out of there, the dominoes would fall, and that part of the world would go to the Communists. We could send our Marines in there, and we could get tied down in a third world war or another Korean action.

Notice that Johnson also mentions Kennedy's withdrawal plan, and says

I always thought it was foolish for you to make any statements about withdrawing. I thought it was bad psychologically. But you and the President [Kennedy] thought otherwise, and I just sat silent.

On the GoT, recalling only from memory, it was apparently a CIA op that was put in motion earlier in '64, approved by Johnson, to provoke the NVN military into making an attack, clearly intended as a basis for a casus belli for the US. My take: in part Johnson wanted some political ammo going into the fall election in case the Repub nominee made a charge that the US was looking weak over there. A retaliatory attack by the NVN in response to our provocations would give him justification for seeking essentially a blank check from Congress as to using military force going forward, which is what he got, the beginnings of the war he sought.

Finally on McN and Johnson: McN was more the cold warrior than JFK but not a fervent one as LBJ was. McN always believed his duty was to carry out the president's orders and not step out of line or influence policy. He disagreed with Kennedy's decision in the fall of '63 to pull out by '65, but he loyally began carrying out that policy, with great resistance from the Joint Chiefs.

Under Johnson, he quickly sensed (either by NSAM 273 in late Nov '63 or by the time of the Feb '64 phone call) that LBJ intended to stay in, despite the quagmire risks, and so went about carrying out Johnson's policy. Sorry, but there is no passing the buck to relieve poor non-elite Lyndon of responsibility here -- it was clearly his war, not McNamara's, much as Lyndon tried to reassign blame.

So Lyndon got his war, which his political benefactors in TX greatly appreciated (esp the Brown Bros, founders of Brown & Root construction) and which the elite NYTman Best and Brightest David Halberstam at that time must have appreciated, as he like Lyndon knew the risks but thought such risks were outweighed by the calamity that would ensue if the communists were allowed to take over another country.

#2.2.1.1 But, his Alma mater is neither here nor there. What is important is that McNamara was fully convinced of the superiority of his analytical methods, qualifying him the one to make "hard choices." But, he was completely wrong about Vietnam. More than anyone else, Mac the Knife was responsible for selling the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to Johnson and Congress; along with McGeorge Bundy (another towering Brahmin), he authored the bombing campaign and troop escalations that followed. Wiki:

Records from the Lyndon Johnson Library have perhaps indicated that McNamara misled Johnson on the attack on a U.S. Navy destroyer by allegedly withholding calls against executing airstrikes from US Pacific Commanders.[34] McNamara was also instrumental in presenting the event to Congress and the public as justification for escalation of the war against the communists.[35] In 1995, McNamara met with former North Vietnam Defense Minister Võ Nguyên Giáp who told his American counterpart that the August 4 attack never happened, a conclusion McNamara eventually came to accept.[36]

President Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnamese naval bases. Congress approved, with only Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR), and Ernest Gruening (D-AK), voting against,[37] the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing the president "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the U.S. and to prevent further aggression." Regardless of the particulars of the incident, the larger issue would turn out to be the sweeping powers granted by the resolution. It gave Johnson virtually unfettered authority to expand retaliation for a relatively minor naval incident into a major land war involving 500,000 American soldiers. "The fundamental issue of Tonkin Gulf involved not deception but, rather, misuse of power bestowed by the resolution," McNamara wrote later.[38]

In January 1965, McNamara together with the National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy co-wrote a memo to President Johnson stating "both of us are now pretty well convinced that our present policy can lead only to disastrous defeat" as it was hopeless to expect the unstable and corrupt South Vietnamese government to defeat the Viet Cong who were steadily "gaining in the countryside".[39] Bundy and McNamara wrote "the time for has come for hard choices" as the United States now had the alternatives of either negotiating with North Vietnam to "salvage what little can be preserved" or resort to intervention to "force a change".[40] Both Bundy and McNamara stated that they favored the latter, arguing that the commitment of U.S troops to fight in South Vietnam and a strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam were now required.[41] In 1965, in response to stepped up military activity by the Viet Cong in South Vietnam and their North Vietnamese allies, the U.S. began bombing North Vietnam, deployed large military forces and entered into combat in South Vietnam. McNamara's plan, supported by requests from top U.S. military commanders in Vietnam, led to the commitment of 485,000 troops by the end of 1967 and almost 535,000 by June 30, 1968. The casualty lists mounted as the number of troops and the intensity of fighting escalated. McNamara put in place a statistical strategy for victory in Vietnam. He concluded that there were a limited number of Viet Cong fighters in Vietnam and that a war of attrition would destroy them. He applied metrics (body counts) to determine how close to success his plan was.[42]

The worst miscalculations are often made by those who are utterly convinced that they are somehow the Best and Brightest, and nobody else is qualified to tell them otherwise. That's the irony in Halberstam's book title. A lot of people have misgivings about Prof. Warren for the same reason. It's not her degrees, or where she teaches - there's something messianic and unsettling about her. Personally, I have the feeling that by convincing others that capitalism can be saved, she is just making the problem worse.

@leveymg

Endorsed Hillary in 2016 and in 2019 says we need dark money to be "all in" to "win this fight" against Trump.

Those things together make her position pretty clear.

Just like Bernie except for the part where she kisses aristocratic ass.

For those playing along at home, Warren just said candidates need to take large amounts of money in secret from big donors to beat Donald Trump.

#2.2.1.1 But, his Alma mater is neither here nor there. What is important is that McNamara was fully convinced of the superiority of his analytical methods, qualifying him the one to make "hard choices." But, he was completely wrong about Vietnam. More than anyone else, Mac the Knife was responsible for selling the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to Johnson and Congress; along with McGeorge Bundy (another towering Brahmin), he authored the bombing campaign and troop escalations that followed. Wiki:

Records from the Lyndon Johnson Library have perhaps indicated that McNamara misled Johnson on the attack on a U.S. Navy destroyer by allegedly withholding calls against executing airstrikes from US Pacific Commanders.[34] McNamara was also instrumental in presenting the event to Congress and the public as justification for escalation of the war against the communists.[35] In 1995, McNamara met with former North Vietnam Defense Minister Võ Nguyên Giáp who told his American counterpart that the August 4 attack never happened, a conclusion McNamara eventually came to accept.[36]

President Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnamese naval bases. Congress approved, with only Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR), and Ernest Gruening (D-AK), voting against,[37] the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing the president "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the U.S. and to prevent further aggression." Regardless of the particulars of the incident, the larger issue would turn out to be the sweeping powers granted by the resolution. It gave Johnson virtually unfettered authority to expand retaliation for a relatively minor naval incident into a major land war involving 500,000 American soldiers. "The fundamental issue of Tonkin Gulf involved not deception but, rather, misuse of power bestowed by the resolution," McNamara wrote later.[38]

In January 1965, McNamara together with the National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy co-wrote a memo to President Johnson stating "both of us are now pretty well convinced that our present policy can lead only to disastrous defeat" as it was hopeless to expect the unstable and corrupt South Vietnamese government to defeat the Viet Cong who were steadily "gaining in the countryside".[39] Bundy and McNamara wrote "the time for has come for hard choices" as the United States now had the alternatives of either negotiating with North Vietnam to "salvage what little can be preserved" or resort to intervention to "force a change".[40] Both Bundy and McNamara stated that they favored the latter, arguing that the commitment of U.S troops to fight in South Vietnam and a strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam were now required.[41] In 1965, in response to stepped up military activity by the Viet Cong in South Vietnam and their North Vietnamese allies, the U.S. began bombing North Vietnam, deployed large military forces and entered into combat in South Vietnam. McNamara's plan, supported by requests from top U.S. military commanders in Vietnam, led to the commitment of 485,000 troops by the end of 1967 and almost 535,000 by June 30, 1968. The casualty lists mounted as the number of troops and the intensity of fighting escalated. McNamara put in place a statistical strategy for victory in Vietnam. He concluded that there were a limited number of Viet Cong fighters in Vietnam and that a war of attrition would destroy them. He applied metrics (body counts) to determine how close to success his plan was.[42]

The worst miscalculations are often made by those who are utterly convinced that they are somehow the Best and Brightest, and nobody else is qualified to tell them otherwise. That's the irony in Halberstam's book title. A lot of people have misgivings about Prof. Warren for the same reason. It's not her degrees, or where she teaches - there's something messianic and unsettling about her. Personally, I have the feeling that by convincing others that capitalism can be saved, she is just making the problem worse.

@Not Henry Kissinger

Is that little George looking in the window? "Hey daddy why is Bill sitting in my seat?"

#3.2.1.1

of the late Twentieth Century.

Looking back now, the photographer should have won a Pulitzer.