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When he first got there, he seemed pretty arrogant to a lot of people. He had a disconcerting habit of pausing in the middle of a sentence to ask "O.K.?", as if his listener were mired two ideas behind him. He still does—but the habit has been accepted by those who work with him most closely. "He has improved a lot in tolerance," says one Navy admiral. "Whenever he gets too stuffy, I just look up over my glasses at him and say, 'Yes, Professor,' and he breaks down and laughs."
Enthoven is plenty smart enough to know that the whiz-kid image needs improving, both in and outside the Pentagon. And to that end he has undertaken a missionary project, speaking at every stronghold of the military mind. Last week he opened a four-week systems analysis workshop for Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps officers.
Whatever the result of this effort may be, Enthoven will still stick by his chalk and blackboard. Said he at a Naval War College talk: "We must make defense planning and the selection of weapon systems an intellectual rather than an emotional process. To do so, we must turn our attention to the question of what's right, not who's right." There can be little argument with that —as long as the what's right really is.