Robert McNamara was John F Kennedy’s choice to fix the sprawling bureacracy at the Department of Defence. McNamara employed an economist’s mind to problems, had greatly increased the destructive power of the USAAF during the Second World War by using data and intelligence to firebomb Japanese cities more effectively, and became the first non family member to run the Ford Motor Company. Kennedy wanted business people in government to bring the dynamism of the American corporate world to the stat
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1–2 minutes

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For more than a decade, the Explaining History Podcast has helped listeners around the world make sense of modern history. What began in 2012 as a simple experiment—short, accessible episodes explaining major historical events—has grown into a long-running library of carefully researched, thoughtful explorations of the 20th and 21st centuries.
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