The overt moral of "The Best and the Brightest", underlined by its clever title, is that the supposed rationalists and pragmatists of the Kennedy Administration were too clever by half in their belief that they could co-exist with the military and Cold Warrior Republicans, who ultimately bent them to their will and forced the U.S. into the Vietnam War.
Just one example of how preposterously distorted Halberstam's thesis is: Robert A. Lovett, who Halberstam portrays as an old-fashioned, courtly Democrat who was elbowed out of the way by Kennedy and his team of hard-charging pragmatists eager to appease the Republicans, was in fact the biggest support of Curtis Lemay during World War II, when LeMay pioneered the horrifically deadly fire-bombing strategy which killed more Japanese civilians than the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Lovett fits right in with the Democratic establishment that blundered and deceived its way in to the fiasco of the Vietnam War, he was just a generation older than Kennedy and his guys.
Halberstam's attempt to stick Republicans with the blame for the Vietnam War is pretty thin gruel, disguised with lots of hearty chunks of chewy anecdotes produced by Halberstam's brilliant reporting. It's his over-arching thesis that is flawed. Today, it is clear that it was not the military but the civilians in the Kennedy Administration who were the bullies--willing to sick the U.S. Army onto the Vietnamese, willing to encourage the assassination of President Diem of South Vietnam, willing to do whatever it took to physically intimidate and kill any Vietnamese who got in their way. America now knows all too well that you don't call the military into a political or social situation until it is time to fight. Ironically, the major breaches of this doctrine have been under the Clinton Administration. Halberstam's account of the most politically motivated and controlled war the U.S. has ever fought brilliantly inverts the Vietnam War into a war caused by Republican and military control of a Democratic Administration. It is a fine, scintillitating performance by Halberstam, but it isn't history.
Halberstam and the many similar Vietnam era war correspondents never seem to be able to reconcile the fact that much of their information came from majors, LTCs, Colonels, and even the odd Brigadier General with their thesis that the War was the fault of the military, not two Democratic administrations in a row. The real issue with the military, which is now being examined, is how physically courageous 4 star Generals were so morally craven that they did not speak out or resign when their political masters gave them orders that they new to be fatally flawed strategically, and unconscionable morally.
Highlights of the book include much fine reporting and interesting Kennedy and Johnson-era gossip on figures in the establishment, a blizzard of details that disguises the mendacity and special pleading of the book's over-arching thesis. Finally, one reads the book and recalls the dictum that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. The parallels between the Kennedy Administration and the Clinton Administration are astounding.
What makes this book tower above the rest is the way that you get to know the major players, from McGeorge Bundy to McNamara to Lyndon Johnson. THey are real people in this book, which brims with the most vivid mini-biographies, fascinating details that make the reader - or at least me - want to dig much much deeper. The details are often incredible, such as the way that McNamara threw himself so deeply into his work that he nearly had a car accident while thinking about re-making Ford or how Bundy faked, brilliantly, having written a paper in prep school by speaking aloud. It all feeds into the portrait of a self-satisfied elite that failed. There is wisdom in the ability to doubt oneself.
While one can quibble with many of Halberstams's points and assertions, as historians are now doing, this is a great place to start to learn about modern American history and government. Its lessons can stimulate a lifetime of study, which it did for me. This book made such a deep impresion on me that it changed my life.
THere is no doubt that this is Halbertam's greatest work. Highest recommendation.