Robert Who?

The date: August 1964. The place: Convention Hall, Atlantic City. The milling throngs at the Democratic National Convention have suddenly thrown themselves into paroxysms of cheers, shrieks and rebel yells. Snaking through the mob come dozens of beach-tanned nubile wenches, smiling, waving placards. The band puffs its zillionth chorus of Happy Days Are Here Again. And then to the spotlighted rostrum moves Lyndon Baines Johnson, who has just been nominated by acclamation as the party's candidate to succeed himself. Humbly, he motions for silence.

He thanks the delegates. He praises Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He promises to do his best. He does not revile the Republicans, but he predicts victory at the same time that he hymns the glories of America.

He becomes very serious. It is time, he says, to think about the man who must stand ready to step into the President's shoes if tragedy should befall. He reminds the delegates that back in March he said on television that competence should be the sole quality in picking a vice-presidential candidate. And suddenly he is making a nominating speech:

"We are very fortunate to have among us a man who is supremely competent. He is a man who, in the past four years, has been responsible for spending $50 billion a year on our nation's defense. He is a man whose watchword is economy. He comes from a business background where he had the job of running the entire Ford Motor Co. He is also the man who has been running our war in South Viet Nam, a war that we are going to win any day. Now! Fellow Americans! I give you the next Vice President of the United States! Mr. Competence himself! The Secretary of Defense! Robert Strange McNamara!"

ROBERT STRANGE MCNAMARA? That's strange. It must be a dream. Or is it? This is the I've-Got-a-Secret season so far as the identity of the next Democratic vice-presidential nominee is concerned. The President's got the secret, and he won't tell--yet. Bobby Kennedy's name is up. So is Hubert Humphrey's. And Sargent Shriver's. And now McNamara's.

Perhaps it is not so far-fetched after all. McNamara, 47, is not likely to get the votes of the Pentagon brass, but he has built up a substantial reputation for himself in the past three years. And, importantly, he is a Johnson favorite. Said Lyndon recently: "I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't know that Bob McNamara or someone like him was Secretary of Defense." The President likes people who come to him with decisions and ideas, and McNamara's abilities in that respect, plus his devotion to public service and his unshakable self-confidence, enhance his potential. Moreover, he is an independent Democrat. He can count on some built-in support from his native California. And he would almost certainly sit better with Southerners than Bobby Kennedy.

McNamara is notably silent about the boomlet on his behalf, but he has apparently found that he has a budding taste for politics. During his last trip to South Viet Nam, he stumped the Mekong Delta with Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Khanh. Unexpectedly, the usually aloof McNamara began waving his arms, exhorting crowds, and crying, "Viet Nam muon nam! (Viet Nam forever)" at the top of his voice. The people obviously loved it and so, apparently, did McNamara. "At the end," says one surprised Defense Department official who was present, "you couldn't keep him away from a camera or microphone." McNamara's boosters now feel certain that once President Johnson reads the Secretary's out-of-town notices, he might well decide to take Robert Strange McNamara to the Big Show in Atlantic City. He certainly could do worse.

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