i have very little to say about clark clifford. he was only secretary for a year. and he devoted himself almost entirely to vietnam. and left the running of the department to paul minsa, who was then deputy secretary of defense. clark was, i think, a very able advocate and he had all the talents of an actor, both in appearance and his ability at presentation. and he did help lyndon johnson start to get out of the war. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, dr. brown, secretary brown. we're contextualizing robert mcnamara in the defense department and the vietnam war. this sets down a nice base line for our next two speakers. i will introduce those speakers, george herring and ed drea. this is an easy task for me, because they are two of the ablist practitioners of the historical craft today. first george. george herring has a virginia ph.d. he taught almost four decades at the university of kentucky. there he mentored many ph.d. thesis, and his students teach throughout the land teaching history of the vietnam war. george also served as editor of the best -- probabl

both secretary brown and professor herring alluded to clark clifford. clifford saw his major role as convincing president johnson to get out of vietnam. clifford was convinced that the american adventure was draining the economy, and threatening to reduce the united states to a second-class economic power. he was very, very concerned that that was the true strength of the united states, not its military might. in order to cajole johnson day and night, which is pretty much what clifford did, he let his deputy, paul nitze run the department of defense. the only time clifford actually made a decision about the budget and strategic arms, he managed to mess up a five-year nuclear submarine program that nitze had to go and clean up. but clifford was successful in convincing johnson that it was a losing battle, and it was time to call an end to escalation and reduce the american commitment to vietnam. both secretary brown and professor herring have alluded to mcnamara's brilliance. george bundy, who served with mcnamara, had the following comment about the man

truman was in a battle for his electoral life in that 1948 campaign, and clark clifford made it clear the only way to win that election is get that black vote, the black vote that moved up north to the electorally powerful -- electoral college powerful states so that was part of it. the other part of what truman was dealing with was he had the sense of justice, and he saw the injustice. but he's also tied into the missouri resistance. when you talk about the complexity of these presidents as they're trying to balance away all of these things, you get what he's dealing with. so you get on one part movement where his justice department is filing amicus curiae briefs with the supreme court in the shelly v. kramer case that dealt with restrictive covenants that limited where african-americans could buy a home, so to get the federal government to weigh-in on the side. this was phenomenal. so you you get that kind of movement. you get the president's commission on civil rights which emerged out of these series of lynchings in 1946 where truman is just like enough already. we've got to do so