Voters look for meanness

"I want somebody who's mean."

— S.C. voter explaining his support for New Gingrich

This is what we've come to — that a significant number of Americans want a president who's mean? Should we be electing an Adolf Hitler or a Josef Stalin? They were plenty mean. They didn't let other countries push them around. They didn't mind starting a war or turning the government upside down or eliminating a few million enemies.

Fifty years after America elected a president who inspired young people to engage in public service and who strove to make politics an honorable career option, we have presidential candidates who try to impress voters with how belligerent and ill-mannered they are. President Kennedy jousted with the press by disarming reporters with his quick wit and self-deprecating humor. Asked about how the news media were treating him, he mimicked the current cigarette commercial, replying that "I've been reading more now and enjoying it less." He said it with a smile because he genuinely enjoyed matching wits with reporters, maybe because he was wittier than the best of them.

Now we have Newt Gingrich attacking the media for daring to ask about the recent allegation of his ex-wife, castigating the media for their "despicable" question. This from a man who led a congressional effort to impeach President Clinton over his extra-marital affair even as, it turns out, Gingrich was having an affair himself. Now candidates address the press with a scowl and bitter words and interrupt those who disagree with them.

But "mean" goes beyond attacking the media. A segment of the electorate seems to want a president who will launch wars around the world over whatever disrespectful comment any foreign leader might make. They're ready to go to war over Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, Somalia, Syria and on and on, as if wars have no consequence except to teach those foreigners a lesson. That same segment is prepared to round up more than 10 million illegal immigrants, load them onto buses and drive them back where they belong, even if it means leaving their dependent children to fend for themselves on American streets. And, while they're at it, they would cut off food stamps to the hungry, housing to those who don't have rent money, heat to those without fuel for the winter and public assistance for those who have no jobs.

They want a "mean" president because they're tired of seeing America get pushed around, and they're tired of paying taxes that go to programs supporting those who pay no taxes. They want the United States to be mean, but they can't mean it, can they?

Robert McNamara paid for his mistakes

The death Monday of Robert McNamara at age 93 sent members of my generation scurrying back to our conflicted memories of long ago. McNamara embodied those conflicts. He was the most prominent member of the extraordinary cadre of confident, competent and ambitious young men who joined the Kennedy administration with the firm belief that they could make government work more efficiently and effectively. "The Best and Brightest," the title applied to them by writer David Halberstam, was in many ways appropriate. They were, as Kennedy said in his inaugural address, "tempered by war," but they were also prime examples of an educational and industrial meritocracy that developed after World War II. They really were "whiz kids" who had proven themselves in academia and industry.

As it often does, hubris humbled their confidence. McNamara and his aides reformed the Pentagon, finding efficiencies in purchasing and manpower. He also helped guide America through its closest encounter with nuclear war, the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. But his confidence and his sense of moral authority took a beating in Vietnam. After Kennedy was assassinated, McNamara and Lyndon Johnson enlarged the war, sending half-a-million U.S. servicemen to South Vietnam to battle a slippery insurgency. As more bombs were dropped and more Americans died, McNamara lost confidence in the U.S. strategy, which was essentially to kill more Vietcong and North Vietnamese than they were able to kill Americans and South Vietnamese. Remember weekly "body counts"?

McNamara left the Pentagon in 1968 after a long talk with Johnson — he said later he didn't know whether he resigned or was fired — and spent much of the rest of his life wrestling with the mistakes he saw in his Vietnam War strategy and tactics.

The lesson of McNamara's honorable service to his country should be that even the world's best management practices, moral certitude and intellectual brilliance cannot inoculate you against mistakes. Continuing to stand by those mistakes can be costly indeed.

Forty-five years ago still reverberates

Saturday marked the 45th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That number of years — 45 — still astounds me. The most significant world event in the first half of my lifetime is being relegated to near-ancient history. Most Americans alive today do not remember the assassination — a fact emphasized to me by an offhand comment I made while teaching a college journalism class some 20 years ago. I was talking about the importance of big news events. "You remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard about the Kennedy assassination ... ," I began, and was greeted with blank stares. Finally one student explained, "We were born in, like, 1965." Suddenly, I felt old.

Today's mantra is that you remember where you were and what you were doing Sept. 11, 2001.

That day in Dallas just doesn't seem so long ago. On the 10th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, I was working in Washington, D.C. While living in the area, I visited the Kennedy grave at Arlington. On the 20th anniversary, I pulled out my old color slide I had taken of the Kennedy grave with the Capitol in the distant background and published it (a rare front-page color photo) in the newspaper. The 30th and 40th anniversaries were less memorable.

On this 45th anniversary of the destruction of the dream Kennedy embodied, we have elected a man who is too young to remember the Kennedy assassination. Many comparisons have been made between Kennedy and Barack Obama. Both men have inspired youthful followers. But despite all the youthful exuberance Obama embodies, he is four years older than Kennedy was when elected. He is older than Kennedy was when JFK was assassinated.

My generation was set adrift by an assassin's bullet, never again to trust wholeheartedly in an elected official, never again to believe that individuals can change the world, never again to think of politics as a noble calling. The aura of martyrdom has inflated the Kennedy mystique and has obscured his failings, the same phenomenon that turned Lincoln into the embodiment of all things positive about America. But an objective analysis of Kennedy's presidency has to admit that much was lost that long-ago day in Dallas. He had inspired the Peace Corps, endured weekly press conferences to speak directly to the public (and spar with the press), used self-deprecating humor to disarm critics, initiated civil rights legislation, pushed for Medicare, set America on the path to the moon and armed the baby boom generation with principles and causes.

As Nov. 22, 1963, fades into the distant past, its impact on America's future will never diminish.