he was the can-do man in the can-do society in the can-do era in david halverstam's phrase. in the early kennedy and johnson years, he managed the american commitment in vietnam almost as a desk officer, whether slogging through vietnam in army fatigues, spewing out statistics, or presiding at a press conference, and he came to embody what was known as secretary brown suggested as mcnamara's war. whatever the difficulties of the moment, he exuded a certainty that promised eventual success. in fact, we now know his public confidence far outlasted the emergence of profound private doubts about both the winnability of the war and indeed ultimately its purposes. and his departure from the pentagon in 1968, as much i think as lbj's march 31st speech of that year marked the glorious end of an era once bright with promise. as the war provoked increasingly nasty divisions in the united states, mcnamara became a target for critics from both left and right. unaware of his muted tightly constrained and largely internalized descent, doves viewed him as the technocrat as his blind faith