I remember, as early as age thirteen, having questions about my father’s integrity. He had numerous conflicts with members of Congress, and the press gobbled it up. An article from Newsweek published in March of 1963 describes his reputation:
With cold logic and a hot temper, Secretary McNamara took on congressmen last week in two fractious issues: the size and nature of the defense budget, and the huge (ultimately $6.5 billion) TFX aircraft contract. His opposition’s allies, barely behind the scenes, were the enemies McNamara has liberally made as a tough, head-knocking executive.
The article goes on to discuss the various things about Dad that bothered the pols: his arrogance, his condescending tone, and (most of all) his willingness to circumvent bureaucratic processes in order to get his own way.
At one point, my mother addressed this with me. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment—which news story or national event prompted her to sit down and talk to me. I only remember that she came into my bedroom and explained that I might be hearing negative things about Dad. Later, during one of Dad’s congressional dustups, I spoke with a reporter. Again, it must have been my mother who allowed me to talk to the press. I would have sat in the living room on the phone, with Mom nearby or in the next room, listening in. When I spoke to the reporter, I asked, “How long will it take my father to prove that he’s honest?”
Soon after this quote appeared in print, I received a dozen letters from across the country. They vouched for my father’s character. Among them was a letter from Vermont congressman Robert Stafford, a former governor and future senator. On his official stationery he wrote, “I have had the privilege of observing your father for the last three years as he appeared before the House Armed Services Committee. I have come to hold tremendous admiration for his ability, judgment, and integrity. I think he is one of the ablest public servants with which this country has been blessed.”
Another letter, penned by a serviceman, read, “I wanted you to know that for me and for many thousands of other people, there is no question about your father’s honesty, or anything else about him. He is a great man doing great work. He is serving his country with a courage and devotion just like that of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.”
Before I dug up that Newsweek article from March of 1963, I remembered having been quoted in it. This was not the case; my name didn’t appear. I must have spoken to a different reporter for a different article. What I remember more clearly, and very painfully, is finding out for the first time that my father was fallible, that his shield could be broken, and that he might not be the titan of my childhood. How could anyone attack his integrity? It must be a mistake. But then, how could he make a mistake? I was distraught.
It comforted me to know that a congressman, a member of the military, and private citizens viewed my father as a man of integrity. Getting those letters allowed me to consciously return to a state of innocence, where I could trust him. He would do the right thing. In retrospect, maybe it would have been better if those letters hadn’t come. Maybe it would have helped me to arrive earlier at the conclusion that my father’s life was not lived wholly on the righteous path. Maybe it would have saved me from the mind-bending pain of those years when I discovered I had been living in the shadow of dishonesty.
Two decades later, in the spring of 1984, David Talbot wrote an article for Mother Jones, “And Now They Are Doves.” The article covered my father’s attempts to rehabilitate his image and step into the role of elder statesman. At that time, I was thirty-four years old, farming my heart out. I had a wife and child.
Over the years, I had thought about Dad every day with a mixture of love and rage. Whenever we spoke and I asked him about Vietnam, he deflected. There was never a big confrontation between us. I remember my life at that time as being defined by an absence of truth and honesty in our relationship, and I remember how I had defended Dad’s integrity when I was a boy—and the letters from his supporters too.
David Talbot called and suggested an interview, and it felt like an opportunity I needed to take. I didn’t want the media attention. I just wanted the chance to speak honestly, to be heard. David came to visit the farm in Winters, and we spoke for an afternoon. Earlier that day, I’d been on the phone with Dad, updating him on the progress of our orchards.
The published article in Mother Jones included a lengthy quote from me. I had never criticized my father so publicly.
There had to be a lot of guilt and depression inside my father about Vietnam. But he will not allow me into the personal side of his career. My father has a strong sense of what he will and won’t talk about with me. I would ask him things, like why he left the Pentagon in ’68. I felt I could learn a tremendous amount of history from him. And I felt I could teach him about the peace movement. But he just gives these quick 30-second responses, and then deflects the conversation by asking, “So how many tons did you produce on your farm last year?” Still seeking refuge in statistics.
I didn’t know if Dad would read the article. One of the many mysteries that remained was the extent to which he followed his own publicity. If I had taken the time to think about it carefully, I probably would have concluded that he did. After all, I knew of his ego and his need to be right, to win.
He called me up almost immediately after the piece ran.
“Is that what you said?” he asked. “Was the quote correct?”
I was a little surprised by the quick timing, but I wasn’t surprised by his response. If anything, it confirmed my disappointment in him. It showed that he cared about his own narrative, when he should have just driven himself hard to the unspun truth.
“Yeah, Dad,” I said. “The quote was correct.”
He was silent. This was always the way he reacted to being hurt. I knew I had hit him in a tender place. I felt sad, but I didn’t feel sorry. It was the first time I had offered my version of the truth and the first time he had heard it.
After a little time had passed, my stance softened. I reread the Mother Jones article several times and convinced myself that it was full of errors and omissions, and I started to believe that David Talbot had neglected important truths about my relationship with Dad—especially the fact, unavoidable, that we loved each other deeply.
I wanted Dad to know how I was feeling. In a follow-up letter to him, I wrote, “They failed to say that we have a relationship based on understanding.”
I really believed that, but it wasn’t the truth. Our relationship was, in fact, based on joy and affection when it came to the things we shared, and deliberate silence and absence relating to the issues of war and peace that divided us. If we had really had a relationship based on understanding, there’s no way I would have given that quote about his thirty-second responses.
As I reread the article today, I see that there were no errors. David Talbot didn’t misquote me or misrepresent my views. I was serious when I told him that I believed the power brokers in Washington, including my father, had made decisions in Vietnam based solely on the military interests of America. So why did I reverse course in private? I think I was reenacting the pattern Dad had established, the one I had learned to follow. I thought I could hold two truths in my head at once, in separate cages, without working through the dialectic. I love you, Dad, and I want you to love me. I’m angry at you, Dad, and I need you to hear me…
To be your son has meant many things to me. It means that there is a profound bond that exists between us that defies the differences that any two people naturally share. It means that you have shared with me part of your spirit, your vision, and your concern for our small planet and the billions of people that inhabit it. And it also means that we are two people who, with our individual and mutual skills and resources and knowledge, can help each other to achieve the happiness and satisfaction in our own lives that is essential to bringing it into the lives of others. We have so much to give to each other. Together we are a formidable team.
I feel the pain of the young husband and father who wrote those words. He was a first-generation farmer, with strong political ideals and a belief that the world could be changed at the level of the soil. He believed Robert McNamara was his partner in this.
There was an imbalance. My father was too silent on the most important subjects in our lives. In that letter, I think I let him win again. We could be father and son, we could be partners, we could be two men with the name McNamara. But we couldn’t really be a team. I know I’m yearning for something that might not have been possible. Wanting an unattainable thing leads to dark thoughts. It leads me to bitterness, to vehemence.
It may not have been so bad. It may just be that we lacked the depth of language and the emotional clarity to integrate the two compartments of our lives—love and strife—into a more holistic pattern. I doubt whether many fathers and sons arrive at such understanding.
In letters to his friends, which I have in my farm office, my father sometimes refers to “Craig’s dream to save the world through farming.” He’s not wrong to call it that; yet I sense a certain sarcasm there that is hurtful. As a farmer, I’ve been hardworking, ambitious, and strategic. These were all qualities that Dad passed on to me, but I’m not sure what he ultimately thought about my career choices.
In “The Road Not Taken,” one of my father’s favorite poems by Robert Frost, Frost concludes:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
We chose different roads. I would like to think that I chose a more honest one. I know that I tried to bury a lot of guilt in the soil. Dad lived with guilt in silence, in a Washington office. The distance between our paths reflects an absence in our relationship. It was not just physical; the lack of honesty was even greater.
Then again, this poem is not really about the importance of the two paths. It’s about the folly of constructing neat narratives and explanations in retrospect.