The Best and the Brightest

THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST

The book I have chosen to review in this prÐ"©cis is David Halberstam’s, The Best and The Brightest. In this book this Pulitzer Prize winning journalist/author explains how this country got itself into the most controversial conflict in U.S. history, Vietnam. Prior to reading this book I felt that I had a very strong understanding of the events that took place leading up to this war, the major players involved, and basically what it was all about. After completing The Best and The Brightest, I realized that I had a very rudimentary comprehension of what had happened. In this book Halberstam not only analyzes the actual conflict, but the political motives behind every decision, and he truly gives the reader an in depth background of the men in charge at the time.

While many believe that the conflict between the United States and Vietnam began in the early 1960’s, it actually goes back as far as 1946. Following WWII, the French wanted to regain control of Vietnam, which it had prior to the war. When the Vietnamese resisted, a colonial struggle broke out, which unified communist and nationalist Vietnamese groups. Choosing sides in this matter was very delicate. Although France was one of our oldest allies and the U.S. was committed to a policy of containment, they did not want to get involved in a messy guerrilla style conflict. Eventually they sided with France, besides the fact that Ho Chi Minh, leader of the North Vietnamese was a supporter of the United States and their constitution. In 1954 the French were defeated despite their overwhelming force, which at one time was as high as 300,000. This defeat left the country divided into two parts, North and South Vietnam. From 1956-1965 the conflict was mainly a struggle between the South Vietnamese army and Communist-trained South Vietnamese rebels known as the Viet Cong. During this time the U.S. was providing the South with military aid, but no troops. They were still very concerned with the policy of containment, yet very weary of getting into a guerilla style war. Eventually when the South Vietnamese proved to be completely ineffective, the United States stepped in. In 1965 they sent their first combat troops into Vietnam. From 1965-1969 the Americans did most of the fighting. By 1969 there was no end in sight, and thousands of Americans and Vietcong lay dead. The U.S. began to gradually withdraw troops. In January 1973, a cease-fire was arranged. The last U.S. ground troops left Vietnam two months later. Despite the treaty, fighting between North and South Vietnam resumed soon afterward but U.S. troops did not return. The war finally ended on April 30, 1975 when South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam.

The main purpose of this book was not to simply talk about the individual battles, or reel off countless statistics, but to get to the roots of the war and ask how it happened. After all 1960 was supposed to be a new age. Newly elected President, John F. Kennedy, youngest ever at the time to be elected, represented a change from the tired, flabby chamber of commerce mentality of the Eisenhower mentality, to the “best and the brightest“. His staff included the most respected intellectuals of the time. They had an image of virility. They stayed in shape, they wrote books, and they won prizes. There was a real excitement in America. Kennedy himself was considered to be the brightest of them all. In many of the early chapters in this book Halberstam goes into great depth to introduce the reader to each one of these members of Kennedy’s staff. As I learned how brilliant and qualified these men were, I began to see the foundation of Halberstam’s main point. When the war seemed to be at a stalemate with no light at the end of the tunnel, I realized the thesis of The Best and The Brightest. Despite being the most distinguished intellectuals in the white house, who were said to be the ablest to serve government this century, they proved to be the architects of the worst crisis in U.S. history. On many occasions throughout the text Halberstam implies that maybe if other people were in some of those high ranking positions this catastrophe may have been averted. He makes the reader ask the question, Were these men victims of history ( The Cold War, the fall of China, the rise of McCarthyism), or were the “best and the brightest” simply not good enough?

David Halberstam grew up in the Bronx, New York and graduated Harvard University in 1955, a self proclaimed “square of the 50’s”. He began his journalism career in Mississippi, writing for The Daily Times Leader. He then moved on to The Tennesean, in Nashville. In 1960 he got a job at the New York Times reporting on the Civil Rights Movement. During this time Halberstam was gathering information for his first book dealing with Vietnam, The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era, which many consider to be a prequel to The Best and The Brightest. In 1963 he received the George Polk award for reporting, including an eyewitness account of a Vietnamese monk burning himself alive in protest to the corrupt leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem, leader of South Vietnam. By the age of 30 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his wartime reporting. Halberstam was one of the first reporters to openly challenge the official story of Generals and Ambassadors, which at one time irked the President so bad, Kennedy actually requested that the Times reassign him somewhere else. A colleague of his, Richard Holbrooke stated “ David changed wartime reporting forever. He made it not only possible but romantic to write that your own side was misleading the public on the progress of the war”.

As I have stated earlier, prior to reading this book I felt that I had a good understanding of the subject. Reading The Best and The Brightest truly opened my eyes. Halberstam was brilliant in familiarizing the reader with the high level officials in Kennedy and Johnson’s administration. I also began to realize the incredible amount of pressure Kennedy was under as soon as he took office. Joe McCarthy’s wild accusations, that the Democratic party was too weak on communism was still in the minds of many Americans. Being tough on communism was of monumental importance. After an extremely close election the young President desperately needed to achieve credibility. The Bay of Pigs fiasco did little to accomplish this task, and in many ways damaged him greatly in the public eye. As Vietnam was presenting itself to be a problem the President found himself at a crossroads. Earlier in his career, as a young Congressman he was strongly opposed to any open conflict with the Vietnamese,