McNamara at WarRobert S. McNamara was widely considered to be one of the most brilliant men of his generation. He was an invaluable ally of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as U. S. secretary of defense, and he had a deeply moving relationship with Jackie Kennedy. But to the country, McNamara was the leading advocate for American escalation in Vietnam. He strongly advised Johnson to deploy hundreds of thousands of American ground troops, just weeks