McNamara—The Nonprofit View

By Richard Magat One must respect the eloquent tributes to Robert McNamara in a recent blog and in the last LAFF newsletter by Peter Bell, Bud Harkavy, and Rocky Staples. But another view of this multidimensional man is not inappropriate. I advanced it many years ago in my review of his mea culpa, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, in Foundation News and Commentary (November/December 1995). My review touched on his role as a (self-described) ”private man,” though he occupied a plethora of roles in nonprofit organizations besides his government service' the boards of the Ford Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the Trilateral Commission, the Oveeas Development Council, the California Institute of Technology, and many others, along with several corporate boards. Excerpts follow: Nonprofit institutions have not been immune from” mistrust, given such scandals as Covenant House, United Way of America, and the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy” . In Retrospect says little about that sector. Of participants in the miscalculations that escalated Vietnam” McNamara declares 'I do not believe, on balance, that America's political leaders have been incompetent or insensitive to their responsibilities and to the welfare of the people who elected them and to whom they are accountable. Nor do I believe that they have been any worse than their foreign counterparts or their colleagues in the private sector.' Hardly a round of applause for the private sector, which includes nonprofits. ” [T]he nonprofit community was slow to officially acknowledge ethical trouble in its own corridors .Nor was it moved by Sisela Bok's provocative book, Lying:Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. In 1989 the Council on Foundations produced a report, “Moral Values,Philanthropy and Public Life.”” Not until 1990 did Independent Sector commission a wide-ranging inquiry” ”Obedience to the Unenforceable: Ethics and the Nation's Voluntary and Philanthropic Community.” The W.K. Kellogg Foundation granted $100,000 to the Josephson Institute” to draft an ethics curriculum for philanthropic givers and recipients, and the Lilly Endowment funded a study” on ethics in high education fundraising” McNamara's book is full of ruminations about moral and ethical choices (“I believe we made an error not of values and intentions but of judgment and capabilities.”). He also includes among the defining moments of his undergraduate education at Berkeley “ethics course [that] forced me to begin to shape my values.” Any number of ethical issues” in the McNamara mea culpa have parallels to, if not lessons for, behavior in the nonprofit sector. For example, he explains his public silence as loyalty to the office of the President, a tenet of the country's political culture. The whistleblower issue has also arisen in the nonprofit world. Was it, for example, hierarchical loyalty that prevented those United War insiders who were suspicious if not knowledgeable of their leaders' malfeasance from coming forward? The miscalculations of Vietnam are laid at the feet of technocrats as well as politicians” the lesson for leaders of nonprofit enterprise is obvious but bears emphasis'to strike a balance between credentialed experts and well-meaning amateurs. ” The price of hubris and stubborn folly of those responsible for the Vietnam debacle was vast. The Independent Sector report declared, “This sector depends on public goodwill and participation. If public support is eroded so is our capacity for public service” We act ethically because we have determined that it is the right thing to do.” Robert McNamara has been condemned for the part he played in Vietnam and for the tardiness of his confession. [But] outspoken critics” have said,” We welcome his acknowledgement that the United States was wrong then, believing that America can never be damaged by an act of contrition.” Nor can the nonprofit sector be damaged by acts of candor, modesty, and openness to the views of those outside familiar circles.