Free Known and Unknown by Donald Rumsfeld

according to LBJ, it wasn’t just Congress that deserved blame for the situation in Vietnam. Johnson sought to tie the conflict to his predecessor, President Kennedy, who sent military advisers into Vietnam in the early 1960s, and to the Kennedy cabinet that Johnson had inherited. He pointedly noted that Secretaries Rusk and McNamara were both Kennedy appointees. I wondered if they felt ill at ease as the President spoke. LBJ then invoked former President Eisenhower, saying that “Ike” had supported his actions in Vietnam. Johnson even referenced consulting about the war with the Pope. I was half convinced he would have placed some of the blame on his wife, Lady Bird, if he could have thought of a way to do so. I watched in amazement—even embarrassment—as LBJ went on with his “woe is me” harangue.
    As I listened to him personalize the growing criticism of the war, I thought to myself that Vietnam wasn’t LBJ’s personal problem. It was our country’s. A Johnsonian phrase, “a stuck pig squeals,” came to mind.
    Looking back on that encounter from different circumstances, I was probably too harsh in my assessment of LBJ. During the Cold War—only a few years after the Soviets tried to place nuclear missiles in Cuba—the Communists were testing American resolve on several continents. It was hard, if not impossible, to ignore the challenge the Communists were posing in Southeast Asia. But it was a tall order to explain that to the American people, and to try to convince them that it was worth fighting a long, costly war in a small country so many thousands of miles away.
    In any event, the President did not make it easy to be sympathetic to him. Indeed, that memorable meeting in February 1966 marked in my mind the beginning of a downward path for Lyndon B. Johnson and his administration. It was certainly a moment of clarity for me in terms of how I saw Vietnam. The war in Southeast Asia would slowly poison the remainder of the 1960s, a decade that had started out with such promise.

CHAPTER 5
“Here, Sir, the People Govern”
    â€”Alexander Hamilton
    A fter I had begun serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, I was sent a doctoral dissertation about the Congress. The thesis was that the representatives elected to Congress tended to reflect the kind of people who lived in their districts. At the time my district had the highest level of education and the highest annual earned income in the United States. From that one might have inferred that it said something about me to have been elected by such a bright, affluent population in one of the largest districts in the country. But, in fact, the dissertation asserted that I was the one who broke the rule. The paper said something to the effect of “Rumsfeld is distinguished principally by his total lack of social, financial, and political standing in the community.”
    As I read the passage one night, I nudged Joyce, who was asleep.
    â€œListen to this,” I said, and I read her the critical lines.
    â€œGo to sleep, Don,” Joyce responded. “It’s tough to argue with.”
    Though the 1960s are commonly remembered for drug use, permissiveness, and the hippie counterculture—“if you can remember anything about the sixties,” one wag joked, “you weren’t really there”—that was not how the decade started. It was a time of energy and opportunity, with a dynamic leader who seemed to offer both in generous supply. Although I was a Republican, it was hard not to be caught up in the excitement and glamour that John F. Kennedy brought to the country. The young, seemingly vital president—he was elected at forty-three—implored Americans to “get this country moving again.” And America responded.
    The astronaut John Glenn circled the Earth. The Freedom Riders began their daring bus rides in the South. Judy Garland embarked on her legendary