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If the President gets credit for new doctrine, McNamara will catch most of the blame for drastic cuts he has ordered in existing programs. Among them: curtailment of the liquid-fueled, obsolescent Titan ICBM and "low reliability" Snark missiles and a virtual end to the development of the Air Force's cherished Mach 3 bomber of the future, North American's B-70, as well as the perennially experimental nuclear airplane. These slashes are sure to bring cries of anguish from pressure groups (both in and out of the Pentagon) and contractors, but none will be so loud or perhaps so damaging to the Administration as those following Kennedy's announcement that the Pentagon will close down 73 military installations in the U.S. and overseas. Moving fast, McNamara issued orders to shutter the first 52 bases—and moving just as fast in outraged protest were scores of community voices and Congressmen whose districts will be affected.
Just Bigger. By all that is hallowed in the much-revered dens of Pentagon bureaucracy. Defense Secretary Robert S. (for Strange, his mother's maiden name) McNamara should be tiptoeing through the cutbacks and the rest of his job with all of the lip-biting hesitancy of a young maiden at her first prom. Any deskman in the top-ranking E Ring of the Pentagon knows that a new Secretary should appear tongue-tied by military terminology, respectful of military uniform, and humble at the talk of potential military destruction. But Bob McNamara, his well-slicked hair carefully parted, his rimless glasses gleaming, approaches his job with a confidence that almost borders on irreverence, which is the way he conducted himself in his years at Ford. The size of the job does not awe him. "I hate to say this." he murmurs with a trace of shyness. "After all, I came from a compa ny of pretty good size. And when you get up to this size, much greater size doesn't mean very much."
Figures & Signs. McNamara was born in San Francisco in 1916. His father, a sales manager for a shoe firm, was 25 years older than his mother. Both doted constantly on their first and only son (a second child. Margaret, was born three years later). Young Bob was an early reader, fast with figures but sickly, and he was 15 before he showed signs of wanting to break out of the protective parental eggshell. He did: he went to sea as an ordinary hand, traveled once through the Panama Canal, once to the Orient and four times to Hawaii.
An economics major at the University of California, Bob McNamara made Phi Beta Kappa, finished his courses with a spectacularly high grade of 288 points out of a possible 315. From Cal, he moved off to Harvard Business School for his master's degree in business administration, returned to the West Coast to work briefly for an accounting firm—and to marry Former Classmate Margaret Craig—and skipped back once more to Harvard, where he taught for three years. As he traveled, he carried with him a reputation as a precise, studious, even strait-laced sort of man who could read a paper in a flash and memorize it. He even took the trouble to amass a card file of jokes suitable for all classroom occasions, and noted carefully on each card the date the joke was told and the class reaction (sample: "GOATS-GHOSTS. Laughter").