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Shortly after he took hold, the new Secretary made what is called in Pentagonese some "quick and dirty fixes." Given the charter by President Kennedy, he rescinded Dwight Eisenhower's morale-damaging order calling for a cut in the number of military dependents abroad (to slow down the dollar drain), and thus won the undying, somebody-back-there-likes-us gratitude of the troops. Polaris got a new step-up, and a fast order for new troop-transport planes shot out of the E Ring like a bullet. Publicly McNamara stumbled only once—and that was to his credit. In early February he casually told Washington newsmen that he did not think that the U.S. stood in any danger from a missile gap. Since the missile gap had been a standard item of the Democratic attack on the Eisenhower Administration, Republicans made the most of Administration discomfiture. McNamara himself went quietly back to his work.
The Flow. McNamara's chill ways with Pentagon brass and the press win him few warm friends. He lost most of those when he began carrying out Kennedy's injunction to run the Pentagon from the top down. As often as not, he turned to his top civilian assistants (see box), rather than to military professionals, for advice. "The ideas," as one veteran bureaucrat said, "came from the top.'' The work of the Chiefs of Staff in the decision-making over such key questions as the size of the retaliatory force and the role of conventional warfare was sharply curtailed. The chiefs gave their opinions, and General Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was kept constantly informed, but the creative reshaping came from civilians in the Pentagon and such outside experts as Harvard Professor Henry (The Necessity for Choice) Kissinger. White House Special Assistants Jerry Wiesner and McGeorge Bundy. Secretary of State Rusk and others.
Budget recommendations, as well, flowed downhill. In the past, the process started with budget men in the services, moved through the service chiefs, on up through the service secretaries to the Joint Chiefs, and then to the Defense Secretary, who became the arbitrating go-between for the White House, Pentagon and Budget Bureau. This time the budget work started from the recommendations of civilian task forces, continued through McNamara and then to the military chiefs and services (as a sort of courtesy ploy), and finally to the White House. The New Frontiersmen claim proudly that their approach to the budget is not so much "Vhat limit should be put on spending?" as "What do we have to spend to do what we have to do?" Nonetheless, the massive Pentagon requests are clipped just about as hard as before. Kennedy, said one aide, "may have the brain of an Irishman, but he's got the heart of a Boston banker."
The double insurance of nuclear plus conventional force will by definition cost many billions more before the forces are in being. The Pentagon will get its money's worth if Secretary McNamara can indeed shape the armed forces to carry forward U.S. diplomatic aims as well as deter the enemies. But the Pentagon's success will have little meaning unless the diplomats devise policies worth implementing. And diplomatic-military success, in turn, depends on whether the Commander in Chief follows through on the doctrine to which he has subscribed: to win the cold war.