Understanding America's Politics of Failure

 

Understanding America’s Politics of Failure

Peter Schultz

 

                  The following is from David Halberstam’s book, The Best and the Brightest, his account of America’s failure in Vietnam.

 

                  “[McGeorge Bundy] was a man with a great instinct for power, and he loved it, he responded to where power was moving, trying at the same time to get people to do intelligent, restrained things in an intelligent, restrained manner.

 

                  “Besides, the idea and the meaning of failure to him and many of the men around him was an almost alien thing. He was so confident in himself, in his tradition and what he represented, that he had no concept about what failure might really mean, the full extent of it. It never entered the calculations. He and others had, in fact, achieved success; they had won awards, climbed in business and academe, each position had brought them higher. They had of course paid the price along the way. Fragmentation had again and again confronted morality, and morality had from time to time been sliced, but it had always been for the greater good of the career. It was the American way, ever upward; success justified the price, longer and longer hours invested, the long day became a badge of honor, and the long day brought the greater title. Success was worth it, and after all, success in the American way was to do well. But the price was ultimately quite terrible. Washington was a company town in the company country where success mattered, and in the end they could not give up those positions and those titles, not for anything. These were the only things they had left that set them apart; they had no other values, no other identity than their success and their titles. The new American modern man was no longer a whole man; it was John McNaughton able to argue against his interior beliefs on Vietnam in order to hold power, McNamara able to escalate in Vietnam knowing that he was holding the JCS back on nuclear weapons, men able to excise Vietnam from their moral framework. So they could not resign; no one decision, not even a war, could make them give up their positions.” [526]

 

                  Or as I will put it: Their positions and titles offered them social approval for their narcissism and so, of course, they could not, they would not give them up even in the face of abysmal failures. Without their positions and their titles, their lives would be meaningless. And, so, they, the best and the brightest, were trapped in their failures.