R.I.P., S.O.B.

"A lot of people think I'm an S.O.B.," said Robert McNamara to an interviewer. He was one of the Best and the Brightest who escalated the Cold War, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to Vietnam. Afterward, he spent years atoning. People in Africa have recently challenged his World Bank activities in the interest of reducing poverty, but they were certainly well-meaning. I prefer the good works of his late wife, who founded Reading Is Fundamental. On the whole, a complicated guy, now dead at the age of 93.

Tweet