Even as anti-war protesters publicly attacked him in the mid-1960s for being the architect of the quagmire in Southeast Asia, McNamara was pumping out confidential memos and engaging in private conversations admitting that the operation was essentially futile. Every cabinet member who realizes that the president they work for is doing something that is fundamentally dangerous to the country confronts a critical choice: whether to stay in the administration to work from the inside or to try reversing the damage by resigning in protest and mobilizing as an opponent of the president.

The life of Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, is an American tragedy. The history is not only tragic—as Pulitzer Prize winner William Taubman and his brother, former New York Times Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman, explain in their fascinating new book McNamara at War —because McNamara ended up isolated, detested, and in fraught relationships with his children. It is also because McNamara knew from the start of his tenure as secretary that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable.

The life of Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, is an American tragedy. The history is not only tragic—as Pulitzer Prize winner William Taubman and his brother, former New York Times Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman, explain in their fascinating new book McNamara at War—because McNamara ended up isolated, detested, and in fraught relationships with his children. It is also because McNamara knew from the start of his tenure as secretary that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable. McNamara at War: A New History, Philip Taubman and William Taubman, W.W. Norton & Co., 512 pp, .99, September 2025

Even as anti-war protesters publicly attacked him in the mid-1960s for being the architect of the quagmire in Southeast Asia, McNamara was pumping out confidential memos and engaging in private conversations admitting that the operation was essentially