February 22, 2007
Greatness at the Pentagon? Posted by Alexander Burns at 02:45 PM EST During Joshua Zeitz and John Steele Gordon’s recent discussion of the Confederate flag and the South Carolina primary, my attention was caught by a comment by that primary’s most famous victim, John McCain. A few days ago, speaking in the Palmetto State, Senator McCain declared that Donald Rumsfeld “will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history.” Redundant phrasing aside, McCain’s comment got me thinking: If Rumsfeld may be remembered as one of the Pentagon’s worst leaders, who should be remembered as its best? Unlike other cabinet positions, the office of defense secretary lacks a modern historical figure to define the way the job ought to be conducted. The Treasury Department has had exemplary leaders like C. Douglas Dillon and Robert Rubin. State Department officials can look up to figures like John Foster Dulles and Dean Rusk. Men like Nicholas Katzenbach and Eliot Richardson can serve as the very models for a modern attorney general. Who, among America’s defense secretaries, can claim to occupy a similar role in the national memory? This is not merely a rhetorical question; I am genuinely curious as to what answers my fellow bloggers might offer. I suppose the place to begin would be by defining the criteria by which one judges a secretary of defense. Presumably, they must include capability at managing the Pentagon bureaucracy, skill in obtaining funds on Capitol Hill, success at overseeing the military during violent conflict, and wisdom in advising the President. Clearly, a great defense secretary should have some combination of these accomplishments, along with a healthy dose of personal character. Looking down the list of Pentagon leaders, however, I fail to see one who is widely recognized for having achieved this. Surely George Marshall was a great man, but his tenure at the Pentagon was relatively insignificant. Robert McNamara was a technocrat and administrator extraordinaire—but he oversaw Vietnam. Caspar Weinberger was a temperate, deft manager who helped conduct some successful military operations. But then, one recalls, there’s Iran-Contra. It’s worth noting that AmericanHeritage.com took an online poll on this subject some time ago. Weinberger came out way ahead.
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