Does Biography Trump Ideas?

I am plowing my way through Robert Caro's fourth volume of his projected five volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. I bought the book after reading an excerpt of it in a recent New Yorker in which Caro relates the moments that unfolded immediately before and after the assassination of John Kennedy.  Caro's writing is crisp and confident and his mastery of details is awe-inspiring.  I have ambitions to write a biography and find my intentions sorely challenged when considering the research that went into this book.

Very early on in his six-hundred page tome, Caro hammers out his organizing principle.  He writes:

"[The book] tries most particularly to focus on and examine a specific, determinative aspect of that era--political power; to explore, through the life of its protagonist, the acquisition and use of various forms of that power during that half century of American history, and to ascertain also the fundamental realities of that power; to learn what lay, beneath power's trappings, at power's core."

Caro contends that in a moment of "deep crisis" such as the transition of the presidency because of tragedy, the power of the presidency "can be observed in all its facets."  Thus, power acts as a character in the book.  Almost independent of Johnson and the Kennedy brothers, power circulates through the Senate chamber, it's out on the campaign trail in 1958 in advance of the 1960 primaries, and it resides in the families of these men.  To say that Johnson and the Kennedys had to contend with power would be to miss the relationship they appeared to have with a spectral force that made them into historical actors.

And yet, it stuck me as curious that Caro's depiction of power seems nearly devoid of ideology and even, in a way, of politics.  Power is psychological, familial; it is fear-inducing, and confidence-building; but it is not liberal or conservative, radical or reactionary.  So Caro does not identify a relationship between power and ideology, at least through the 1960s primaries.  Johnson commands the Senate, he wheels and deals within Texas's corrupt political machines, and he hates, cajoles, and flip-flops his way toward the Democratic convention in 1960.  Caro's characterizations of the Kennedy brothers is similar in the faintness of ideology and prominence of psychological traits.

Is ideology, then, a casualty of biography?  In the index, among the largest entries under Johnson is one for "physical appearance of."  The terms "liberal" and "liberalism" do not get mentioned either under Johnson, Kennedy, or as stand-alone entries.  Has Caro revealed something about biography, that the closer we draw a historical actor the less their ideas matter to us?

This disconnection between ideas and biography resonates with the results of the recent Indiana primary.  Richard Lugar, the longest serving senator in Washington today, lost to Richard Mourdock, a Tea Party backed insurgent who has won three state-wide elections in the last five years.  The one major difference in the run-up to the primary vote was that I knew Lugar as a person--his elder statesman persona preceded him--and knew Mourdock primarily through his ideology.  Even though Lugar obviously has ideas that define his politics, his biography had displaced the public's perception of his ideology.  Mourdock is all ideology to most of us who voted on Tuesday, and his biography pales in significance to the public perception of what we think he stands for.  We know Lugar, thus his ideology fades; we don't know Mourdock, and so his ideology radiates.

Does it then stand to reason that when intellectual historians focus on ideas we lose the people behind them; but the reverse happens when we chose to write a biography?  Do intellectual biographies achieve what they aim to create--a marriage of ideas and person?  And if so, how?

Tim's Light Reading (11-24-2011): The Thanksgiving Edition

If you're bored with your relatives, TV, or the general holiday scene---or if you love USIH so much that you're browsing here on a Thanksgiving whim---something from the entries below may be of interest. I will offer up reflections on our conference next week. - TL

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1 (of 8). Nietzsche in America

Check out this review of Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's new book, Nietzsche in America. I don't know how I'm going to top Ross Posnock for my USIH review, but don't count on seeing my effort soon; I just got my copy of the book yesterday.


2. Middletown and Intellectual History

Slate's John Plotz writes here on his attempt to make some sense of the newly released readership information from Muncie (IN) City Library (from the 1891-1902 period). It's an interesting read for many different reasons. But I was struck by the following two paragraphs in relation to how intellectual historians conduct some of their work (bolds mine):

The book I’m currently trying to write is about the way that ordinary readers—Louis, me, or you [Louis is late 19th-century Muncie reader]—can sometimes feel drawn into a book, so far into it, that it gives us a partial sense of a life elsewhere—until we recall that our hands ache, our eyes are tired, and it’s time to pick up the kids. My working title is Semi-Detached, and that about summed up my feelings by the end of my Bloom experiment. I was partially there with Louis in the Muncie library—but I was also a very, very long way away. I’d gathered and crunched some data, and heard some stories, but …. I was always gaining on Louis, but somehow I was never fast enough to fall into stride with him, to turn sideways and find myself looking him straight in the eye. I was struck by Stuart’s reaction [one of Louis's grandchildren] when I asked him what we could deduce from his granddad’s reading. He laughed and said, “You know, I don’t even think the books I read as a kid say much about who I am now. It was all baseball then and I haven’t even seen a game in 20 years. Even as a grown man I changed; I feel like I’m in my fourth lifetime now.”

Stuart’s point about the gap between what you read and who you are got me thinking. Maybe the way Louis receded as I chased after him was not my problem but my answer. In the books Louis checked out he found, as readers everywhere always do, more than just a perfect mirror of his own life (as if “what Middletown read” told us “what Middletown really was”). He also found a way out: a glimpse of the Italy where scientists experimented with frog’s legs, or the state of Mississippi back when killing a slave was a simple property crime. The books he read might even have helped him catch a glimpse of what he wanted his own future to be working in the world of mechanics and of physics, far from Muncie (“Go West, young man”—yes, until you hit the Philippines). Thanks to those books, he too had a telescope. Like mine, it was small and imperfect, with no guarantees about the accuracy of what he glimpsed through it. Still, coming from the sort of Muncie life that he did (his mom had moved them in with in-laws, had even been threatened with having to send the kids off to various relatives) I bet that glimpse at a distant world loomed fairly large for him.

I forward these passages for your consideration because I often think about the difference between what my subjects read and what they actually took away---what they used.


3. Is a Rise in Faculty Salaries the Cause of Higher Education Tuition Inflation?

Reuter's columnist Felix Salmon says no. Here's a key passage from the piece (bolds mine):

Overall, if we exclude for-profit schools, which were a tiny part of the landscape in 1999, we have seen tuition fees rise by 32% between 1999 and 2009. Over the same period, instruction costs rose just 5.6% — the lowest rate of inflation of any of the components of education services. (“Student services costs” and “operations and maintenance costs” saw the greatest inflation, at 15.2% and 18.1% respectively, but even that is only half the rate that tuition increased.)

The real reason why tuition has been rising so much has nothing to do with [William] Baumol, and everything to do with the government. Page 31 of the report is quite clear: “except for private research institutions,” it says, “tuitions were increasing almost exclusively to replace losses from state revenues or other private revenue sources.”

In other words, tuition costs are going up just because state subsidies are going down.

...It's the State Subsidy, Stupid!


4. Herbert Marcuse's FBI File

Lawrence Winsaft of the UC-San Diego Philosophy Department has done a little research on his department and uncovered some faulty FBI book assessments of Herbert Marcuse's works (esp. Reason and Revolution, One Dimensional Man, and Essay on Liberation). Good stuff.


5. Heretics and the Gospel of Education

In a collective review of four recent books about education (higher and secondary), titled "The Educational Lottery" and published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Steven Brint frames the books in a novel way. He posits each author as a particular kind of heretic in relation to the pervasive American myth that education is at the root of all social, political, and cultural progress. Here are a few paragraphs from the review's opening (bolds mine):

Education is as close to a secular religion as we have in the United States. In a time when Americans have lost faith in their government and economic institutions, millions of us still believe in its saving grace. ...“The answer to all of our national problems,” as Lyndon Johnson put it in 1965, “comes down to one single word: education.”

The American education gospel is built around four core beliefs. First, it teaches that access to higher levels of education should be available to everyone, regardless of their background or previous academic performance. Every educational sinner should have a path to redemption. (Most of these paths now run through community colleges.) Second, the gospel teaches that opportunity for a better life is the goal of everyone and that education is the primary — and perhaps the only — road to opportunity. Third, it teaches that the country can solve its social problems — drugs, crime, poverty, and the rest — by providing more education to the poor. Education instills the knowledge, discipline, and the habits of life that lead to personal renewal and social mobility. And, finally, it teaches that higher levels of education for all will reduce social inequalities, as they will put everyone on a more equal footing. ...

The advance of the education gospel has been shadowed from the beginning by critics who claim that education, despite our best efforts, remains a bastion of privilege. For these critics, it is not that the educational gospel is wrong (a truly democratic, meritocratic school system would, if it existed, be a good thing); it is that the benefits of education have not yet spread evenly to every corner of American society, and that the trend toward educational equality may be heading in the wrong direction. They decry the fact that schools in poor communities have become dropout factories and that only the wealthy can afford the private preparatory schools that are the primary feeders to prestigious private colleges. The higher education Establishment recognizes critics like these as family. They accept the core beliefs of the education gospel and are impatient only with its slow and incomplete adoption.

Brint then goes on to outline several schools of heresy: "the new restrictionism"; "the 'free the students' school"; "the 'fool’s gold' group"; and "the 'true educators' sect."


6. Occupy AHA?

Werner Herzog's Bear says yes, and has drawn up a preliminary manifesto to aid the cause. Here are the first five demands (of ten total) in the manifesto:

1. That the AHA officially repudiate the rhetoric of "overproduction" and acknowledge that the lack of good jobs is the biggest cause of the current crisis in employment for historians.
2. That the AHA create high-level positions in its organizational structure specifically intended to be filled by and to advance the interests of graduate students and contingency faculty members.
3. That the AHA encourage departments that persist in using non-tenured labor to establish permanent positions with decent pay, health benefits, and job security, and to officially censure those departments that fail to meet these standards.
4. That the AHA recognize the current crisis in academic publishing and encourage departments to make their tenure and hiring decisions.
5. That the AHA put an end to the conference job register and discourage the practice of on-site conference interviews, and encourage their replacement with preliminary interviews over the phone of via video chat. ...

I think I like 3 and 4 from this excerpted list the best. Check out the rest here.


7. Pepper Spray

It's not organic.


8. History Corps

If the AHA wants to avoid scenes with pepper spray and an OWS-style movement, they could do worse than support a plan offered by USIH friend Culture Rover (aka Michael Kramer): he calls it "History Corps." Kramer's plan expands on one offered by Jesse Lemisch in his dialogue with Anthony Grafton (latest installments here and here). Here's Kramer's summation:

This kind of endeavor would address the very real economic issues that younger historians and aspiring historians face. But it does so not by telling them that they should have gone to business school. Instead, it offers a vision of historians as professionals. It gives them dignity and it more clearly distinguishes the distinctive skills, perspectives, and expertise that historical training brings. It’s not about making historical training applicable for other fields, but rather of clarifying how history as a field is necessary to a good society.

Read the whole thing here.

----------------------------------------------------

Enjoy! - TL

The Kloppenberg Plenary: Obama's (Controversial?) Intellectual Biography

Our Third Annual USIH Conference almost received a direct reference in Patricia Cohen's review of James T. Kloppenberg's newest book, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition (Princeton Press, 2010). Here are her two near misses (bolds mine): (1) "In New York City last week to give a standing-room-only lecture about his forthcoming intellectual biography... ." and (2) "Those who heard Mr. Kloppenberg present his argument at a conference on intellectual history at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center responded with prolonged applause."

The USIH omission is a shame because I'm pretty sure I remember Kloppenberg saying in the plenary that his book was released that same day, October 22. The article says "on Sunday," but it is unclear whether Cohen meant this coming Sunday (Oct. 31) or the Sunday after the conference (Oct. 24). In any case, I guess we'll have to wait 'til next year on our conference's first direct NYT appearance. C'est la vie.

We can take some pride, however, in the fact that Cohen quoted from one of our own: Andrew Hartman. Here are her two references to him:

(1) "The way he traced Obama’s intellectual influences was fascinating for us, given that Obama’s academic background seems so similar to ours," said Andrew Hartman, a historian at Illinois State University who helped organize the conference.



(2) "There seemed to be skepticism regarding whether Obama’s intellectual background actually translated into policies that the mostly left-leaning audience could get behind," Mr. Hartman said. "Several audience members, myself included, probably view Obama the president as a centrist like Clinton rather than a progressive intellectual as painted by Kloppenberg."

Andrew deserves the credit for the "standing-room-only" crowd. The plenary was held in the Segal Theatre, and thirty-five seats were available both on the right and left sides of the room. Along with the nineteen standing in the back of the room (which included me), I counted roughly 90 people attending. I round up to 90 because I could not see everyone around the columns, and only noticed a random seat or two empty in the chairs.

The book review fairly summarizes Kloppenberg's talk. I was pleased to see two specific things cited. First, Kloppenberg emphasized at the start of his talk that Obama's intellectual development occurred in relation to three key themes, or "matrices" (a term left out by Cohen but used by him): (a) the history of American democracy, (b) the ongoing development of the philosophy of pragmatism, and finally (c) the history of the intellectual (and social and cultural) upheavals of the 1970s-1990s. Cohen presents all three of these themes in the tenth paragraph of her piece, or roughly half-way through.

Second, I was also happy to see this humorous line from the talk make into Cohen's write up (bolds mine):

Conservatives who argue that Mr. Obama is a socialist or an anti-colonialist (as Dinesh D’Souza does in his book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”) are far off the mark, [Kloppenberg] said. “Adams and Jefferson were the only anti-colonialists whom Obama has been affected by,” he told the audience in New York. “He has a profound love of America.”

Although I liked seeing those two references, there were some further details Kloppenberg relayed in relation to his three key themes. When he discussed the upheavals of the Culture Wars, he stressed the theme--and the tension---between "universality and particularity." He asserted that Obama absorbed the lessons of Thomas Kuhn, Clifford Geertz, and John Rawls in relation to creating "provisional fixed points" and "useful fictions." In other words, Kloppenberg sees Obama as incorporating the inherent, contingent nature of pragmatism in his thinking about policy and the culture wars. Obama attempts to undercut the passion of ideological thinking by seeing phenomenological truths rooted in events and episodes.

There is no denying the relativism of this philosophical approach, but Kloppenberg did not specify in his talk whether that framework permeated ~all~ aspects of Obama's life (e.g. religion), or just his political philosophy. If the former, then conservatives of all stripes will jump on Kloppenberg's book as proof of Obama's radical leftism, or at least of his lack of deep roots in the long Western tradition (i.e. transcendent truths, achievement of pure objectivity, etc.). And Kloppenberg's explicit reference to Nietzsche as being a part of Obama's intellectual history will push another corner of cultural critics, particularly the Bloomian/Straussian crowd, into apoplexy. I must say that though Kloppenberg made that connection, he did not specify exactly where---in the talk at least---Nietzsche directly entered Obama's story.

One could counter the relativism charge in relation to Obama's political philosophy by citing the (liberal) historicism of Obama's constitutional thinking. Cohen sets this up as the now familiar "living" versus "dead" constitutional philosophies. Here is her passage on this:

Taking his cue from Madison, Mr. Obama writes in his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope” that the constitutional framework is “designed to force us into a conversation,” that it offers “a way by which we argue about our future.” This notion of a living document is directly at odds with the conception of Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court, who has spoken of “the good, old dead Constitution.”

But Cohen's---and Kloppenberg's---reference to James Madison shows how Obama's philosophy splits, in my opinion, the living/dead difference. Kloppenberg called the following "the only smoking gun" that arose from his research, but he spoke of a November 1991 document wherein Obama elaborated on a "curvature of Constitutional space" around the process of deliberation that informed the document's creation (i.e. the Constitutional Convention itself as a process of compromise).

So if Scalia and his crowd represent one historical tradition in thinking about the U.S. Constitution "works," then Obama---and Madison and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and the Warren Court---represent another. Both traditions are historical, but both are not seen as valid in the eyes of (legal) ideologues. I favor the living/deliberative/curvature interpretation, but my point is that appeals to history don't answer which is better, at least not in the limited context of a discussion about Obama's intellectual history. The argument is a moral-political one about which interpretative tradition is superior. Conservatives can't use history to prove wrong a liberal constitutional train of thought.

As a mild digression, I offer that proof in either direction would have to come through a utilitarian study of the effects of both philosophies on policies that touch people. But do we have the time to figure this out by scientific study? No. We're living the study. And U.S. citizens already complain that our congress doesn't act fast enough (which would itself be an argument in the direction of living/deliberative tradition---anyway).

That Kloppenberg's plenary and book served up such meaty history to chew on is a credit to him and the planning team for the conference---Paul Murphy, Lauren Kientz, and especially Andrew Hartman.

I end these reflections by offering a hearty thank you to James Kloppenberg. It was a great pleasure having him at the conference. - TL

The Kloppenberg Plenary: Obama's (Controversial?) Intellectual Biography

Our Third Annual USIH Conference almost received a direct reference in Patricia Cohen's review of James T. Kloppenberg's newest book, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition (Princeton Press, 2010). Here are her two near misses (bolds mine): (1) "In New York City last week to give a standing-room-only lecture about his forthcoming intellectual biography... ." and (2) "Those who heard Mr. Kloppenberg present his argument at a conference on intellectual history at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center responded with prolonged applause."

The USIH omission is a shame because I'm pretty sure I remember Kloppenberg saying in the plenary that his book was released that same day, October 22. The article says "on Sunday," but it is unclear whether Cohen meant this coming Sunday (Oct. 31) or the Sunday after the conference (Oct. 24). In any case, I guess we'll have to wait 'til next year on our conference's first direct NYT appearance. C'est la vie.

We can take some pride, however, in the fact that Cohen quoted from one of our own: Andrew Hartman. Here are her two references to him:

(1) "The way he traced Obama’s intellectual influences was fascinating for us, given that Obama’s academic background seems so similar to ours," said Andrew Hartman, a historian at Illinois State University who helped organize the conference.



(2) "There seemed to be skepticism regarding whether Obama’s intellectual background actually translated into policies that the mostly left-leaning audience could get behind," Mr. Hartman said. "Several audience members, myself included, probably view Obama the president as a centrist like Clinton rather than a progressive intellectual as painted by Kloppenberg."

Andrew deserves the credit for the "standing-room-only" crowd. The plenary was held in the Segal Theatre, and thirty-five seats were available both on the right and left sides of the room. Along with the nineteen standing in the back of the room (which included me), I counted roughly 90 people attending. I round up to 90 because I could not see everyone around the columns, and only noticed a random seat or two empty in the chairs.

The book review fairly summarizes Kloppenberg's talk. I was pleased to see two specific things cited. First, Kloppenberg emphasized at the start of his talk that Obama's intellectual development occurred in relation to three key themes, or "matrices" (a term left out by Cohen but used by him): (a) the history of American democracy, (b) the ongoing development of the philosophy of pragmatism, and finally (c) the history of the intellectual (and social and cultural) upheavals of the 1970s-1990s. Cohen presents all three of these themes in the tenth paragraph of her piece, or roughly half-way through.

Second, I was also happy to see this humorous line from the talk make into Cohen's write up (bolds mine):

Conservatives who argue that Mr. Obama is a socialist or an anti-colonialist (as Dinesh D’Souza does in his book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”) are far off the mark, [Kloppenberg] said. “Adams and Jefferson were the only anti-colonialists whom Obama has been affected by,” he told the audience in New York. “He has a profound love of America.”

Although I liked seeing those two references, there were some further details Kloppenberg relayed in relation to his three key themes. When he discussed the upheavals of the Culture Wars, he stressed the theme--and the tension---between "universality and particularity." He asserted that Obama absorbed the lessons of Thomas Kuhn, Clifford Geertz, and John Rawls in relation to creating "provisional fixed points" and "useful fictions." In other words, Kloppenberg sees Obama as incorporating the inherent, contingent nature of pragmatism in his thinking about policy and the culture wars. Obama attempts to undercut the passion of ideological thinking by seeing phenomenological truths rooted in events and episodes.

There is no denying the relativism of this philosophical approach, but Kloppenberg did not specify in his talk whether that framework permeated ~all~ aspects of Obama's life (e.g. religion), or just his political philosophy. If the former, then conservatives of all stripes will jump on Kloppenberg's book as proof of Obama's radical leftism, or at least of his lack of deep roots in the long Western tradition (i.e. transcendent truths, achievement of pure objectivity, etc.). And Kloppenberg's explicit reference to Nietzsche as being a part of Obama's intellectual history will push another corner of cultural critics, particularly the Bloomian/Straussian crowd, into apoplexy. I must say that though Kloppenberg made that connection, he did not specify exactly where---in the talk at least---Nietzsche directly entered Obama's story.

One could counter the relativism charge in relation to Obama's political philosophy by citing the (liberal) historicism of Obama's constitutional thinking. Cohen sets this up as the now familiar "living" versus "dead" constitutional philosophies. Here is her passage on this:

Taking his cue from Madison, Mr. Obama writes in his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope” that the constitutional framework is “designed to force us into a conversation,” that it offers “a way by which we argue about our future.” This notion of a living document is directly at odds with the conception of Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court, who has spoken of “the good, old dead Constitution.”

But Cohen's---and Kloppenberg's---reference to James Madison shows how Obama's philosophy splits, in my opinion, the living/dead difference. Kloppenberg called the following "the only smoking gun" that arose from his research, but he spoke of a November 1991 document wherein Obama elaborated on a "curvature of Constitutional space" around the process of deliberation that informed the document's creation (i.e. the Constitutional Convention itself as a process of compromise).

So if Scalia and his crowd represent one historical tradition in thinking about the U.S. Constitution "works," then Obama---and Madison and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and the Warren Court---represent another. Both traditions are historical, but both are not seen as valid in the eyes of (legal) ideologues. I favor the living/deliberative/curvature interpretation, but my point is that appeals to history don't answer which is better, at least not in the limited context of a discussion about Obama's intellectual history. The argument is a moral-political one about which interpretative tradition is superior. Conservatives can't use history to prove wrong a liberal constitutional train of thought.

As a mild digression, I offer that proof in either direction would have to come through a utilitarian study of the effects of both philosophies on policies that touch people. But do we have the time to figure this out by scientific study? No. We're living the study. And U.S. citizens already complain that our congress doesn't act fast enough (which would itself be an argument in the direction of living/deliberative tradition---anyway).

That Kloppenberg's plenary and book served up such meaty history to chew on is a credit to him and the planning team for the conference---Paul Murphy, Lauren Kientz, and especially Andrew Hartman.

I end these reflections by offering a hearty thank you to James Kloppenberg. It was a great pleasure having him at the conference. - TL

Robert Strange McNamara: RIP

[Updated: 1 pm, 7/8/09]

I just learned that the former U.S. Secretary of Defense and past president of the Ford Motor Company, Robert McNamara, died this morning. May he rest in peace---though I may be one of only a few, historians or otherwise, who wills his soul any good fortune.

I gained some acquaintance with McNamara's biography and place in history not through the press or any personal memories of Vietnam, but through the tough documentary Fog of War. The film's subtitle---"Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara"---goes some way toward explaining my less-than-disgusted view of McNamara's place in U.S. history.

I began to abstractly understand Baby Boomer animus toward McNamara through the film. That generation faulted McNamara as the common link between the failed Vietnam policies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Errol Morris knew this, of course, and did not shy away from related probing questions. But I gained a concrete understanding, however, of that animosity when I defended Fog of War (extreme bottom of link) from a critical review in the Journal of American History (Vol. 92, no. 3, Dec. 2005). [Warning: You must be a History Cooperative/JAH subscriber to view these links in full.]

One of the problems with the review, in my opinion, was its criticism of Morris for supposedly glossing over McNamara's faults. The reviewer's intense response to my criticism of the review can be seen at the bottom of the link with my work. Despite the "dialogue," I contend still that the review forwarded a decidedly wrong interpretation of the film in relation both McNamara's actions and his person.

But I recall this not to relive old scholarly arguments. I bring my reflections to USIH because I see Fog of War as a first draft, visual biography of McNamara's intellectual development. Morris' work is an intellectual biography masquerading as film.

How? Any film that uses history and biography to put forth lessons covering empathy, ethics, rationality, metaphysical questions, perception versus reality, self-criticism, and human nature surely falls within the realm of intellectual history. In a classroom setting these lessons provide the history instructor with the opportunity to raise a number of philosophical questions in the context of a concrete chronological period in U.S. history (i.e. the Cold War). The possibilities for student engagement are extraordinary. Indeed, were I some kind of dictator of history teaching, or a czar of U.S. history instruction, I would require Fog of War for every post-Civil War U.S. survey course offered in higher education.

While these lessons provided a vehicle for intellectualizing McNamara, Vietnam, World War II, and the Cold War, Morris also does a fantastic job of humanizing McNamara. The documentary reveals a McNamara in tears, choked up with regret over losses and his failings. Those regrets cover his personal life, political dealings, and missed opportunities in a life that included participation, remote and direct, in the fog of various wars.

I think the reason for the historical dissonance on McNamara has to do with the young and old versions of the man. As a younger and middle-aged man, McNamara was prideful, overly confident, and intellectually capable. As an old man he began to turn his critical faculty on himself. Morris' film conveys both halves of McNamara's life, and the older man elicits your sympathy.

Some parts of the NYT obituary convey this tension. Here are two brief excerpts from that extraordinarily long and thorough retrospective:

- In 1995, [McNamara] took a stand against his own conduct of the war, confessing in a memoir [In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam] that it was “wrong, terribly wrong.” In return, he faced a firestorm of scorn. ...
- By then he wore the expression of a haunted man. He could be seen in the streets of Washington — stooped, his shirttail flapping in the wind — walking to and from his office a few blocks from the White House, wearing frayed running shoes and a thousand-yard stare.

"Haunted." This is an apt descriptor in relation to McNamara. I certainly found the Morris documentary haunting. It is my hope that McNamara's legacy as a civil servant haunts us as a nation. Perhaps his lessons will find the ears of those decision-makers who matter. A look at his biography should, I hope, instill caution. And insofar as caution is part and parcel with conservatism, then I hope all political leaders obtain to some of old man McNamara's conservatism and hard-earned humility. - TL

Additional links with annotations:

1. Here is Errol Morris confirming my observations above. John Prados and David Ignatius confirm Morris' assessment.
2. But Morris' account of McNamara's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis might be defective. In an extended HNN piece, Sheldon M. Stern blasts McNamara's remembrance of his role as hawkish adviser to JFK during the events of 1963.

Robert Strange McNamara: RIP

[Updated: 1 pm, 7/8/09]

I just learned that the former U.S. Secretary of Defense and past president of the Ford Motor Company, Robert McNamara, died this morning. May he rest in peace---though I may be one of only a few, historians or otherwise, who wills his soul any good fortune.

I gained some acquaintance with McNamara's biography and place in history not through the press or any personal memories of Vietnam, but through the tough documentary Fog of War. The film's subtitle---"Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara"---goes some way toward explaining my less-than-disgusted view of McNamara's place in U.S. history.

I began to abstractly understand Baby Boomer animus toward McNamara through the film. That generation faulted McNamara as the common link between the failed Vietnam policies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Errol Morris knew this, of course, and did not shy away from related probing questions. But I gained a concrete understanding, however, of that animosity when I defended Fog of War (extreme bottom of link) from a critical review in the Journal of American History (Vol. 92, no. 3, Dec. 2005). [Warning: You must be a History Cooperative/JAH subscriber to view these links in full.]

One of the problems with the review, in my opinion, was its criticism of Morris for supposedly glossing over McNamara's faults. The reviewer's intense response to my criticism of the review can be seen at the bottom of the link with my work. Despite the "dialogue," I contend still that the review forwarded a decidedly wrong interpretation of the film in relation both McNamara's actions and his person.

But I recall this not to relive old scholarly arguments. I bring my reflections to USIH because I see Fog of War as a first draft, visual biography of McNamara's intellectual development. Morris' work is an intellectual biography masquerading as film.

How? Any film that uses history and biography to put forth lessons covering empathy, ethics, rationality, metaphysical questions, perception versus reality, self-criticism, and human nature surely falls within the realm of intellectual history. In a classroom setting these lessons provide the history instructor with the opportunity to raise a number of philosophical questions in the context of a concrete chronological period in U.S. history (i.e. the Cold War). The possibilities for student engagement are extraordinary. Indeed, were I some kind of dictator of history teaching, or a czar of U.S. history instruction, I would require Fog of War for every post-Civil War U.S. survey course offered in higher education.

While these lessons provided a vehicle for intellectualizing McNamara, Vietnam, World War II, and the Cold War, Morris also does a fantastic job of humanizing McNamara. The documentary reveals a McNamara in tears, choked up with regret over losses and his failings. Those regrets cover his personal life, political dealings, and missed opportunities in a life that included participation, remote and direct, in the fog of various wars.

I think the reason for the historical dissonance on McNamara has to do with the young and old versions of the man. As a younger and middle-aged man, McNamara was prideful, overly confident, and intellectually capable. As an old man he began to turn his critical faculty on himself. Morris' film conveys both halves of McNamara's life, and the older man elicits your sympathy.

Some parts of the NYT obituary convey this tension. Here are two brief excerpts from that extraordinarily long and thorough retrospective:

- In 1995, [McNamara] took a stand against his own conduct of the war, confessing in a memoir [In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam] that it was “wrong, terribly wrong.” In return, he faced a firestorm of scorn. ...
- By then he wore the expression of a haunted man. He could be seen in the streets of Washington — stooped, his shirttail flapping in the wind — walking to and from his office a few blocks from the White House, wearing frayed running shoes and a thousand-yard stare.

"Haunted." This is an apt descriptor in relation to McNamara. I certainly found the Morris documentary haunting. It is my hope that McNamara's legacy as a civil servant haunts us as a nation. Perhaps his lessons will find the ears of those decision-makers who matter. A look at his biography should, I hope, instill caution. And insofar as caution is part and parcel with conservatism, then I hope all political leaders obtain to some of old man McNamara's conservatism and hard-earned humility. - TL

Additional links with annotations:

1. Here is Errol Morris confirming my observations above. John Prados and David Ignatius confirm Morris' assessment.
2. But Morris' account of McNamara's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis might be defective. In an extended HNN piece, Sheldon M. Stern blasts McNamara's remembrance of his role as hawkish adviser to JFK during the events of 1963.