Robert S. McNamara

Business Personality / Presidential Advisor

Robert Strange McNamara served as the United States Secretary of Defense under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (1961-68), overseeing military strategies and policies during the Cold War and the Vietnam War. A native of San Francisco, McNamara served in World War II and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. After the war he went to work with the Ford Motor Company and rapidly rose in the ranks until he was named company president in 1960. Five weeks later he accepted Kennedy's offer to serve in the cabinet as the defense secretary. McNamara restructured the military and moved from a reliance on nuclear weapons to a flexible strategy of conventional and limited wars meant to contain the communist forces of the Soviet Union and China. The escalation of American involvement in Vietnam occupied McNamara's time and energy throughout his tenure, and McNamara's businesslike approach and use of non-military analysts rankled Pentagon officials, members of Congress and anti-war protesters. By 1967 he was openly skeptical that the U.S. could be victorious in Vietnam and resigned to become the president of the World Bank, a post he held from 1968 to 1981. Since then he has written about his experiences (1995's In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam) and lectured on contemporary politics. He was the subject of the Oscar-winning 2003 documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, which was directed by Errol Morris.

Other U.S. Secretaries of Defense include George C. Marshall and Donald Rumsfeld.