This chapter examines some of the ways in which Lowell’s poetry engages with the US presidency and with the legacies of individual presidents. With the exception of John F. Kennedy, Lowell was critical of those who held office during his lifetime – and even his feelings about Kennedy were ambivalent. However, Lowell – himself from political stock – also felt an affinity with those in power. His poetry, especially in History, documents his own forays into the public world of campaigning and specifically his relationships with Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. Through its simultaneous expressions of fascination and revulsion when it comes to the exercise of power, Lowell’s poetry also confronts some of the moral conundrums of American history. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of presidential speech-making and what this might have to do with lyric poetry.

Economic and political unrest in 1960 brought American opinions of the shah’s government to their lowest ebb, pushing the shah to appoint ‘Ali Amini, a pro-American development advocate and modernizer, as prime minister. Reformers in the Kennedy administration hoped that Amini and Iran’s young economists would usher in a new program, the Third Plan, that would steady the country’s economy while moving the shah away from dominating the political scene. The shah, however, outmaneuvered Amini and sidelined the economists, launching his own reform program, the White Revolution. By 1964, the shah had consolidated his position while the influx of oil revenues resolved the economic crisis. At the same time, the US government abandoned the idea of foreign-backed development in Iran, surrendering to a new narrative of the shah as a “revolutionary monarch” who could stabilize the country.

Sunzi was a household name by the 1980s and continued to establish itself in the popular imagination in the decades that followed. It was quoted and referred to in movies and television shows without explanation. Outside academic debates as to the universality of Sunzi as a work of strategy, it clearly symbolized the use of strategy for many people. While anyone could mention Sunzi to signal their interest in strategy, serious students of strategy put Sunzi together with Clausewitz to claim to know strategy from A to Z. Robert Asprey actively promoted Sunzi within military circles, both out of conviction of its value and because of his friendship with Samuel Griffith. John Boyd, a retired air force officer, developed his own approach to strategy that was influential mostly in the Marine Corps. Some of his supporters have called Boyd “the greatest strategist since Sunzi.”

The 1958 Middle East crisis led to a change in the relations between the United States and Israel. The Eisenhower administration looked at Israel as a strategic ally in a region that fell under the sway of the Soviet Union. Hesitantly, the seeds for strategic cooperation between the two nations were being sown. The deepening strategic ties between the two nations led the American recognition that the Arab–Israeli conflict was conflated with the Cold War. Consequently, the United States recognized that Israel needed arms in order to maintain its strength whilst facing an Arab military challenge due to the Soviet military support for the Arab states. In a gradual process that began with President Eisenhower and culminated with President Lyndon Johnson, the United States became Israel’s main arm supplier. The 1967 June War further deepened the attachment between the two nations. Evangelicals cherished what they saw as the fulfilment of the prophecies about the restoration of the Jewish state, and the American people and politicians viewed the Israeli victory as additional proof of the Israelis’ high spirit and capabilities, especially when compared to the failing war in Vietnam. For Israel, which came to control more territories, the war provided an additional opportunity to deliver its messages to the United States through tourism diplomacy. The war also forced Israel to contemplate its place in the Middle East, with peace becoming a more plausible option.

In 1973, Norman Mailer published Marilyn, a biographical profile meant to be a 20,000-word piece, but which Mailer expanded to over 100,000 words after becoming deeply fascinated with Monroe during the writing process. Marilyn would remain such a fixture in Mailer’s mind that he would also compose a fictional account of her life, 1980’s Of Women and Their Elegance, and would turn this into a play, Strawhead, which was performed at The Actor’s Studio in 1986. This chapter explores Mailer’s fascination with Monroe, which likely arises from the various ways in which aspects of his life so closely resemble those of his subject. Like Marilyn, Mailer struggled with a controversial public image that threatened to overshadow his craft and at times led to misunderstandings and reductive assumptions about his personal character.

In 1960, Mailer published his famous essay on JFK, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” a defining and significant contribution to New Journalism. The essay frames JFK as a kind of existential hero and a beacon of hope for America’s future, and is representative of the lasting influence Kennedy had on Mailer’s political views and conceptions of America, the American Dream, and American masculinity. Much of The Presidential Papers, a miscellany of writings published in 1964, is also devoted to the Kennedys, and the figure of JFK haunts more than one of Mailer’s later works as well.

Chapter 6 assesses the ambassadorship of Henry Cabot Lodge II, chosen by President John F. Kennedy to lead Embassy Saigon at the height of the 1963 "Buddhist crisis." South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem's crackdown on Buddhist demonstrators had alarmed American public opinion, and Lodge decided shortly after taking up his duties that Diem had to go. This view ran counter to that of every senior administration figure - Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, CIA Director John McCone, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy - all of whom believed that Diem, despite his flaws, was preferable to any alternative and ought to be supported. General Paul Harkins, Lodge's military counterpart in Saigon, likewise felt that Washington should stand by Diem. Lodge prevailed over this opposition through a campaign of secrecy, misinformation, and repeated disobedience. He formed ties with rebel generals and promised them U.S. backing if they overthrew Diem, a policy no one in the White House or State Department had approved. He withheld information about coup plots from his superiors. He refused to follow orders from Rusk to meet with Diem and resolve the situation diplomatically. Diem's deposal and murder were in great part Lodge's doing. However distasteful, that outcome gave America a fresh start in Vietnam.

In many respects, as he confessed later in life, McNamara’s mistakes were mistakes of omission not commission. They were mistakes nonetheless. His mistakes raise important counterfactual questions. What if McNamara had inherited another model for civil-military relations? What if the State Department had been stronger? Could a counterinsurgency strategy have worked in South Vietnam? Could different funding arrangements in Washington have produced different outcomes? What if Johnson had been less of a New Dealer? What if McNamara had defined “loyalty” differently? What would President Kennedy have done?

The book provides a reassessment of Robert S. McNamara’s decisions during the Vietnam War. It situates him at the end of a historical process for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), a young agency that was still in flux and trying to define the proper balance between civilian and military advisors. McNamara’s concern for economic issues meant he resisted international commitments, in Vietnam and elsewhere. His idiosyncratic views on loyalty led him to self-censor and adopt public positions that were at odds with his private views. He ultimately became the spokesperson for a war that he had resisted. The book has benefited from a host of new sources, including McNamara’s papers at the Library of Congress, recently declassified Defense Department materials and the private diaries of his assistant for International Security Affairs, John T. McNaughton.

Roger Hilsman and Robert Thompson prepared plans for Vietnam that counterbalanced the increasing pressure to deploy troops. Thompson had a great influence on McNamara. He informed the Secretary’s frustrations with the US mission’s inability to coordinate existing programs and with the Chiefs’ focus on conventional tools. By July, McNamara instructed the Chiefs to prepare a phaseout plan for US advisors in Vietnam, which was called the Comprehensive Plan for South Vietnam (CPSVN). It was designed to train the South Vietnamese to fight the communist insurgency themselves. Growing unrest in South Vietnam did not dampen these plans; instead, they accelerated. A phaseout brought order to existing programs and promised to secure their long-term funding.

McNamara moved more forcefully than any of his predecessors in implementing civilian control over the military, with a contemptuous and domineering attitude toward the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). His most important managerial innovations were designed to enforce “subjective control,” namely to impose civilian objectives and ideas on the military. The Draft Presidential Memoranda (DPMs) and the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS) were designed to align military tools to civilian-defined foreign and economic policies. He worked closely with Secretary of State Dean Rusk to align military tools to the President’s foreign policy and with Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon to ensure the Defense Department’s programs fit within a framework of fiscal discipline.