The Use of Power With a Passion for Peace

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Seated around the massive mahogany table in the Cabinet Room of the White House, President Johnson and his top diplomatic and military advisers last week discussed the unsolved dilemmas of Viet Nam and the Dominican Republic. Midway through the meeting, McGeorge Bundy glanced at his watch, slid his chair back from the table and silently departed. The President, half amused and half annoyed, gazed after him. "There," he said, "goes my debater."

As it happened, McGeorge Bundy, 46, was off for two days of discussion and debate with Harvard faculty members and students about the current course of U.S. foreign policy. In recent months, while criticism of that policy has reached a crescendo, particularly in academic circles, Bundy has increasingly come to the fore not only as Johnson's debater but as a chief public articulator of U.S. aims and purposes.

The Galvanizing Words. This is not a role that he fancies. He would prefer to stay behind the scenes--or rather, below them, working out of a basement office in the White House. His title is Special Presidential Assistant for National Security Affairs. As such, he is the President's foremost personal analyzer, arranger and adviser on all matters touching the fields of foreign policy, defense and intelligence. Half a dozen times each day, a red light on Bundy's telephone console flashes, and "Mac" picks up the receiver to hear L.B.J. ask: "What do you think about . . .?" And dozens of times each day Bundy, in talking to others, utters the most galvanizing words in U.S. Government: "The President wants . . ." During the first days of the Dominican crisis, President Johnson, by his own count, talked to Bundy 86 times. It is probably safe to say that after each talk, Bundy passed the word to some high-ranking official that "The President wants . . ."

What brought Bundy out of the basement? Answer: the tide of professorial and otherwise scholarly criticism of President Johnson's stay-with-it policies in Viet Nam and the Dominican Republic. At scores of colleges, professors who were unsympathetic to the Administration's policies staged "teach-ins"--which often turned into "drum-ins" of their own views. Students donned black armbands and hoisted protesting placards; some even took up collections for those oppressed farm boys, the Viet Cong. Into the act got such bleary-eyed outfits as the Filthy Speech Movement on the University of California's Berkeley campus, and the Sexual Freedom Movement at San Francisco State College. Just in case anyone wonders what the Sexual Freedom Movement might have to do with Viet Nam, Founder Jefferson Poland, 22, had an explanation: "People's lives are more important than sexual freedom."

The dissenters--backed by such respectable citizens as the editorialists of the New York Times and Senior Pundit Walter Lippmann--almost made it sound as if they spoke for the majority of Americans. No such thing: the latest Gallup poll showed that for every two citizens who want the U.S. to get out of Viet Nam, three favor its present policy there or want to escalate the war further; that 76% support U.S. military intervention in the Dominican Republic. Still, the decibel count of criticism is high, and Johnson is supersensitive to any sort of criticism. He therefore gave Bundy a go-ahead to answer the critics on their own home grounds.

"A Little Scary." To the job of Ambassador to Academe, McGeorge Bundy brings solid-gold credentials. A summa cum laude Yale graduate in mathematics, at 34 he became the first Yale-educated dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. A compactly built man (5 ft. 10 in., 165 Ibs.) with greying brown hair, his pink cheeks, furrowed brow and plastic-rimmed glasses give him the air of a slightly perplexed professor. A professor he has been, but there is not a pennyweight of perplexity in him. He is self-confident to the point of arrogance, intelligent to the point of intimidation. "I've always thought Mac was maybe a little scary to people when they first met him," says his oldest brother Harvey, 49, vice president of a seafood firm in Gloucester, Mass., "but very warm when you get to know him."

Family connections have given Bundy a remarkable range of contacts. His mother is related to the Lowells; his father was secretary to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, served for seven years as an assistant to Henry L. Stimson. Older Brother William P. Bundy, 47, is a 14-year Government veteran who was Allen Dulles' deputy at CIA for nearly ten years, later headed a 360-man shop at the Pentagon as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, is now the State Department's Far Eastern expert. At the Pentagon, Bill occupied an office in the outermost "E" ring just down the hall from where his father once worked for Stimson. Now, in the State Department, Bill is a seasoned pro and is in a position to give Mac, the gifted amateur, sound advice on any sensitive subject. Bill is married to former Secretary of State Dean Acheson's daughter Mary. And there is also a Bundy link with the clan Kennedy, though admittedly a very slender one:

Mac's younger sister Katharine, 41, is the wife of New Jersey Physician Hugh Auchincloss, a first cousin once removed of Jacqueline Kennedy's stepfather.

A Certain Inconsistency. In his current capacity as public advocate of the Administration's foreign policies, McGeorge Bundy has in his favor the fact that, as a student in pre-World War II days, he was exposed to--and agreed with--the strongly interventionist views of most of his college professors, who insisted that the U.S. had a duty to go to war against Nazism and Fascism. This puts him in an ideal position to point out the inconsistency of the professors' present isolationist position. In an essay published in 1940, when he was all of 21 and fresh out of Yale, Bundy wrote that "though war is evil, it is occasionally the lesser of two evils."

With a visible villain like Hitler afoot, it seemed clear that war was then the lesser evil--a supposition with which the professors and their liberal allies heartily agreed. Today, faced with a totalitarianism of the left rather than the right, and with less identifiable villains, the liberals have swapped sides with the isolationists. The extent to which this is true is sometimes astonishing. In a recent debate on Viet Nam policy at the University of Wisconsin, for example, a liberal graduate student commented in all earnestness that the U.S. need not worry about the Chinese Communists' taking over Southeast Asia because "we can defend our United States from within our own shores."

Bundy's initial reaction to such comments was one of wintry scorn. When 127 Washington University faculty members invited him to St. Louis to answer a few pejorative questions--such as "Who is the enemy?"--he not only cut them cold, but did so in a scathingly critical letter. (Although he would not take back a syllable of that letter, he now regrets having sent it, since it only served to stir up more campus criticism.) Last month, when at the last moment he was ordered to go to Santo Domingo and was therefore forced to cancel a scheduled television debate, he sent his regrets along with a swipe at the critics. "I think many of these critics have been wrong in earlier moments of stress and danger," he said, "and I think many of them misunderstand the hard realities of this dangerous world."

In His Element. It was in that same spirit that Bundy last week ducked out of the top-level White House meeting and headed for Harvard to take part in a panel discussion on U.S. foreign policy. It was held in Lowell Lecture Hall, where Bundy used to conduct his popular course, Government 185--"The U.S. in World Politics." More than a thousand people, many of them old acquaintances, packed the hall. And when the discussion got going, Bundy spoke with the ease and confidence of a man in his element.

He did not attempt to underplay the gravity of events in Viet Nam. "The situation is serious, dangerous and difficult," he said. "But I do not believe it is hopeless." There will be "more Americans in South Viet Nam," he went on, because "in light of the Vietnamese effort and their sacrifice, it is somewhat too soon for America to pull the plug. We have to stay with it." If Viet Nam fell, he added, "there would be a great weakening in the free societies in their ability to withstand Communism."

On the rain-slicked sidewalk outside, students picketed with placards reading BUNDY NO. 1 DROPOUT (referring to his absence from the televised debate) and

WHEN WILL BUNDY PAY FOR HIS WAR CRIMES? Inside, hostile questions flew at Bundy, and of themselves drew applause. "Perhaps," said Bundy after one such outburst, "I could have a chance to answer the questions before they are applauded." When Bundy declared that the Viet Cong holds sway over Vietnamese peasants through force and terror, a long hiss came from the middle of the auditorium. "That interesting noise is not an argument," Bundy said.

"Let us go on."

Talk turned to the Dominican Republic, and one professor wanted to know why the U.S. had chosen to support a "political primitive" and "rascal" like General Antonio Imbert Barreras. In such fast-moving and complex situations, Bundy patiently explained, it was difficult to find a man who had "the virtue of Pericles."

The Four Strands. At Harvard's Phi Beta Kappa exercises the following day, Bundy the Arguer became Bundy the Articulator. Hunched over the lectern in musty, dusty Sanders Theater, he spoke without a text, only occasionally referred to notes written on a yellow legal pad in his cramped southpaw hand --a handwriting so small that his White House secretaries use magnifying glasses to read it.

"I have been unable to get it out of my mind," he began, "that it was just 25 years ago this spring that we were drawn from isolation into engagement."

That "garish spring," he said, had been "the watershed of our modern history." From it emerged the four great strands that have shaped the fabric of the past quarter-century. As Bundy put them, they are: 1) an acceptance by the U.S. of the responsibilities of world power, 2) a dedication by the U.S. to "the purpose of peace," 3) a "commitment of concern" by the U.S. for the needs and aspirations of other nations, 4) a U.S. awareness of the "reality of Communism."

All four strands are interwoven, said Bundy, and any attempt to deal with one of them by itself threatens the whole fabric. A case in point was the late Senator loe McCarthy, who in making anti-Communism the touchstone of truth impeded "the actual understanding of the reality of Communism."

Bundy recalled that this would have been the year of lohn F. Kennedy's 25th reunion at Harvard, and he speculated about what the late President might have said on the occasion. Perhaps, said Bundy, it would have gone something like this: "We must hold to one another across the generations and not allow misunderstandings or specific arguments to separate us. America can do nothing if it is not together, and she is not much if she is not in touch with the hopes of others. One must have a passion for peace, respect for power, awareness of friends. He might even have said, 'Now the trumpet summons us again.' "

Heart of the Matter. This is a favorite theme of Bundy's. "Very near the heart of all foreign affairs," he wrote 14 years ago in a preface to a collection of Dean Acheson's state papers, "is the relationship between policy and military power."

With its immense power, he says, the U.S. is repeatedly faced with the crucial choice of when to use it and when to withhold it, when to act and when not to act. Yet there are all too many men, he believes, who are reluctant "to give full weight to the role of power and its necessity in the world's affairs."

Again, in a memorial speech last month at Franklin Roosevelt's grave site in Hyde Park, Bundy said: "We cannot have peace without power, and power alone does not make peace. We cannot limit ourselves to one objective at a time. We, like Caesar, have all things to do at once. And this is hard. In Viet Nam today we have to share in the fighting; we have to lead in the search for peace; and we have to respond, in all that we do, to the real needs and hopes of the people of Viet Nam."

Noise Level. Bundy's keen appreciation of the legitimate uses of power was nurtured in an extraordinary family that has long been accustomed to authority. His mother, now 74, traces her lineage practically to Plymouth Rock, is a niece of longtime Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell and Poetess Amy Lowell. His father, Harvey Hollister Bundy, was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., but managed to overcome that handicap and break into Boston's upper stratum by means of a brilliant marriage and an equally brilliant law career.

"We grew up in a happy, normal family," says Bundy's sister, Mrs. G. d'Andelot Belin, wife of a Boston lawyer, "with perhaps a higher noise level than some." The five Bundy children, says Boston Attorney Elliot Richardson, who knew Bundy at Harvard, grew up as part of "the American Establishment, if there is one. These are people who are used to thinking in terms of what the problem is in the most pragmatic, clearheaded, analytical terms."

Bill Bundy was in Jack Kennedy's class at the Dexter School in suburban Brookline, and Mac was a year behind. Still a year apart, Bill and Mac won top honors at Groton, were Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, were tapped by Eli's most elite senior society, Skull and Bones.

When World War II broke out, Mac enlisted as an army private after memorizing an optometrist's chart so that his poor eyesight wouldn't keep him out. He became an officer, was assigned as a military aide to Admiral Alan G. Kirk. In wartime London, Bill Bundy recalls, Mac knew all the right people. "He went to Harold Laski's soirees on Tuesday night and Lady Astor's on the weekend. It was a balanced ticket."

Critic John Mason Brown, a cabin mate of Mac Bundy's aboard Kirk's flagship the Augusta during the Normandy landings, recalls that even then Mac was hardly the shy type. "On D-plus-one," said Brown, "I was summoned to the admiral's quarters and all the brass were having breakfast, including General Bradley. Mac was there too--the lowly lieutenant. Bradley was explaining some invasion move, and at one point he said, 'And then we go in here.' Mac said--in effect--'No we don't.' And Bradley accepted it."

Too Cold for Comfort. Mustered out in 1945 as a captain with a Bronze Star, Bundy spent 18 months helping former Secretary of War Henry Stimson write his memoirs, On Active Service in Peace and War. The book's closing lines, addressed to younger generations, remain strikingly relevant: "Let them learn from our adventures what they can.

Let them charge us with our failures and do better in their turn. But let them not turn aside from what they have to do, nor think that criticism excuses inaction."

In 1949, Bundy began lecturing at Harvard, in four years was dean. While at Harvard, he met Radcliffe's associate dean of admissions, Mary Buckminster Lothrop, proposed to her after two dates, and married her in 1950. "Until he met her, he was a little too cold for comfort, too brilliant for endurance," says John Mason Brown. "She's softened him."

As dean, Bundy was known as a fine administrator and lecturer, played a key role in President Nathan Pusey's famed "Program for Harvard College," which extracted $83 million from alumni, businesses and foundations. One philanthropic organization that was not always as openhanded as Bundy would have liked was the Rockefeller Foundation. Shortly after John Kennedy was elected President, Mac told the President-elect: "I admit I have an interest in seeing Dean Rusk as Secretary of State. It would get him out as head of the Rockefeller Foundation."

As it happened, Bundy was also under consideration for a high State Department job, but when Kennedy offered to make him the Deputy Undersecretary for Administration, Bundy turned the job down. "Too much like being dean again," he said. Finally Bundy accepted the position of Special Presidential Assistant for National Security.

Threading the Needle. There is no neat way to describe the powers and functions of this job. As Bundy himself says, it is "the despair of chartmakers." But Budget Bureau Executive Assistant Director William D. Carey, whose job is to analyze administrative operations, has summed it up this way:

"The Bundy group works with a minimum of paperwork, keeping their fingers on the troublesome points of defense and foreign policy, being sure they are in the stream of intelligence but in no sense in the line between the President and the heads of State or Defense. Bundy is a convener and a catalyst, certainly active rather than passive, alert to spotting gaps in the fabric of national security planning and, if you will, quick in 'threading the needle' to close them."

Ghastly Week. Bundy sees it as a "staff officer's" job, designed to "extend the range and enlarge the direct effectiveness" of the President. No matter how efficient the executive departments may be, he explains, "there remains a crushing burden of responsibility and of sheer work on the President himself." This work must be done, "to the extent that he cannot do it himself, by staff officers under his direct oversight."

At first Bundy relished the bubbling excitement and personal power that the job gave him. "Why don't you come and join the fun?" he asked a former Harvard colleague in the early days. Then came the Bay of Pigs, and Bundy, who had wholeheartedly supported the abortive effort, recalls it as a "ghastly week." But he regained his footing, and by the time the 1962 Cuban missile crisis unfolded, he was sufficiently sure of himself to set up "ExCom," the task force that ran the Cuba operation, largely from his own Situation Room in the White House basement.

At the time of Kennedy's assassination, Bundy was recognized as one of the genuinely important officials in the foreign-policy field. When Lyndon Johnson returned from Dallas on Nov. 22, he invited three men from the crowd that met him at Andrews Air Force Base to join him in the helicopter flight to the south lawn of the White House--McNamara, Under Secretary of State George Ball (Rusk was out of the country) and Bundy.

Stressful Months. But Bundy's first days with Lyndon added up, in his own words, to "a stressful three months." Early in the transition period, Bundy, as he had always felt free to do with Kennedy, poked his head into the oval office while Lyndon was conferring with Henry Cabot Lodge. He got a blistering rebuke. "Goddammit, Bundy," snapped the President, "I've told you that when I want you I'll call you."

Johnson was not exactly sure of what to do with the Bundy operation. He found out soon enough. During the Panama crisis in January 1964, Bundy was off in Antigua on vacation. The President did not summon him back, but he gradually became aware that the memos on national security were not so crisply phrased, the advice was not so succinct and pointed as when Bundy was around. From that time on, Bundy had President Johnson's full confidence. And when Bundy routinely submitted his resignation after Johnson was elected in his own right in 1964, he got it back with a notation: "Why do you do things like this? Stop it."

A measure of Bundy's current value to the President was his role in the Dominican crisis. From the first, he was in the thick of it. He took charge of a high-level committee of Pentagon, State Department and CIA men that met every morning for weeks in his Situation Room to ride herd on day-by-day developments in Santo Domingo. It was Bundy who came up with the idea of establishing a U.S. "line of communication" as a buffer between rebel and junta forces in the city.

Then, last month, the man behind the scenes became the man on the scene. On orders from the President, he flew to the Dominican capital with three other high-ranking U.S. officials to see whether a compromise government could be pasted together that would satisfy both sides. Bundy spent ten busy days sounding out officials, learned that the man Washington had in mind to head the government had no real support and could offer no guarantees against Communist domination. The mission was unsuccessful, but not for lack of trying.

Gored--but Good. As a Boston Brahmin in a Texas corral (half of Johnson's twelve special assistants are Texans), Bundy is far from Johnson's ingroup. But he is fascinated, almost transfixed by the President's elemental energy and earthiness. He recognizes Johnson as the political supreme, and he has come a long way from the days when he thought of politics as a grubby little game. "A politician's life is like a bullfighter's," Bundy now says. "The bull can get him any day."

Sure enough, in his only venture into domestic politics in recent years, Bundy got gored--but good. Self-confident as ever, he decided to try to untangle the messy brawl for the 1964 Democratic vice-presidential nomination. First he told Lyndon that he thought Bobby Kennedy would make a fine running mate, was naive enough to suggest that the two might work well together. After Lyndon thumbed Bobby down for the job, Bundy called Bobby and urged him to announce that he had voluntarily withdrawn from the running. That only made Bobby mad. "I'm afraid he hasn't been a very good friend," said Bobby later. Now, Bundy wisely sticks to foreign affairs.

Mary Mac & Mary Bill. Bundy routinely works twelve-hour days. He rises at 7:15 or so each morning in his home in Washington's Spring Valley section, bolts his four-minute eggs and coffee, scans the morning papers and chats with Mary (known as "Mary Mac" to distinguish her from another Mrs. Bundy, "Mary Bill"). Occasionally he drops three of his sons off at Washington's St. Albans School; the fourth son entered Groton last year.

By 8:15, Bundy is at his spare, functional desk, whittling down the voluminous overnight traffic of cables, memos, reports. The 9 a.m. meetings with his dozen or so aides move with Bundy-esque brusqueness. A recent exchange:

Aide: I'm not sure this is the right thing to do.

Bundy: The President is.

Aide: I haven't really thought this through yet, but . . .

Bundy: Don't.

One Engine. When the current spate of campus debates and special missions for the President ends, Bundy is determined to retreat from public view. But he is sure to surface again, for his shop is a kind of crisis center, and there has been no shortage of crises in the past 4 1/2 years--from Laos, Cuba and Berlin under Kennedy, to Panama, Viet Nam and the Dominican Republic under Johnson.

Then, as now, Bundy will be acting strictly as the President's man, advising rather than advocating, implementing rather than innovating. So far as his own views are concerned, he tells friends that he has had only "marginal differences" with both Kennedy and Johnson, now finds himself "in strong general agreement" with Lyndon's views. If he were not, he says, he would have quit long ago.

Close as he is to it, Bundy remains awed by the institution of the presidency--no matter who happens to be occupying it at the moment. "This country of ours, which is almost ungovernable, has only one engine," he says. "That is the presidency. If it doesn't go, there's nothing." He is dedicated to the idea of keeping that engine revved up for the sake not only of the U.S. but of all nations. For as Bundy sees it, the U.S. is the only great power in "the full 20th century sense" of the term that is on freedom's side--and without freedom, there is nothing.

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