Robert S. McNamara and John W. Gardner: Lyndon Johnson’s Cabinet Warriors

Lyndon Baines Johnson took the oath of office as the 36th president of the United States on November 22, 1963, aboard Air Force One as it readied to carry the body of his slain predecessor from Dallas back to the capital of a stunned and grieving nation. Johnson inherited a military commitment in Vietnam that Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy had undertaken, a commitment he was convinced was necessary to contain communist aggression not only in Southeast Asia but throughout the world. Johnson was also strongly committed to the civil rights legislation that his predecessor had advocated, and he harbored aspirations for a larger agenda of reforms to address the problems of economic inequality. In effect, Johnson’s grand vision for his presidency was a two-front war, one against international communism and the other a domestic war on poverty. The domestic war he would eventually put under the command of John W. Gardner, whom he appointed to head the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in 1965. The military commitment in Vietnam was already under the oversight of Robert S. McNamara, who had served President Kennedy as secretary of defense since 1961.