Clemons and McBeth - MavDISK

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PARTI . THEORYANDPRACTICE
commonly cited, but not necessarily con-ect, example of the rational model producing poor
policy can be found in the history of U.S. involvement in the conflict we call the Vietnam War.
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara served both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson
during the Vietnam War. Vietnam was, in fact, often called McNamara's war. Prior to his
arrival at the Pentagon, McNamara had been the president of Ford Motor Company. He and
his whiz-kid staff tried to bring with them an approach widely known as systems analysis. This
management approach to organization and budgeting was based on statistics, defining clear
objectives, examining long-term cost and benefit ratios, and systematically monitoring and
evaluating progress."
McNamara and the Pentagon were routinely attacked for an oven-eliance on quantification-
including the infamous use of body counts to prove that our side was winning. Jerome Agel
(1972,76), in an essay indirectly aimed at systems analysis, once took a slap at the legendary
Public Broadcasting System show Sesame Street, arguing that "kids are razzle-dazzled with four
following three-which is exactly what the guys who gave us Vietnam and pollution know."
The general critique was that while carefully counting the trees, the managers of our war
effort completely missed the forest. It is not too much to claim that the close association of
the rational model with the can-ying out and defense of U.S. policy in Vietnam was enough to
largelydiscreditthis model in the minds of a great manypeople. .
For example, in their history of U.S. foreign policy from 1939 to the mid-1990s, America
Ascendant, Thomas G. Paterson and J. Gan-y Clifford (1995) state:
"Management" became one of the catchwords of the time. They had an inordinate faith in data.
When a White House assistant attempted to persuade Secretary of Defense Roben McNamara,
the "whiz kid" from Ford Motor, that the Vietnam venture would fail, McNamara shot back:
"Where is your data? Give me something I can put in the computer. Don't give me your poetry."
Danger lurked in a heavy reliance on quantified information. (p. ISI)
Stanley Kamow (1991), author of the premier text on the Vietnam War writes the following:
McNamara. . . looked at the figures and concluded optimistically after only forty-eight
hours in the country that "every quantitative measurement. . . shows that we are winning
the war." No conflict in history was studied in such detail as it was being waged. . . . But
the statistics somehow failed to convey an accurate picture of the problem, much less of-
fer solutions. For the missing element in the "quantitative measurement" that guided
McNamara and other U.S. policy makers was the qualitative dimension that could not easily
be recorded. . . . (p. 271)
Approaching the Vietnam challenge like industrial managers. . . . Washington strategists
reckoned that larger investments of men, money and material would logically yield larger
results. (p. 284)
And Loren Baritz (1998), author of Backfire (arguing that American exceptionalism and
;ulture, our technology and our bureaucracy, led inexorably to the disaster of Vietnam) almost
~ot it right when discussing the noise, political, and bureaucratic problems that affected the
rnalysts and blocked rational analysis. But, in the end, he, too, resorts to the familiar critique,
:iting a critic who characterized systems analysis as a model that "discourages the study of one's
)pponents, his language, politics, culture, tactics, and leadership." He sums this up with the
-
'The management technique known as "systems analysis" is not to be confused with the idea of political
systems introduced in Chapter I.
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CHAPTER2 . THE RATIONAL PUBliC POliCY METHOD 43
observation that "By now, this is a familiar point. Systems analysis reinforced the traditional
American assumption that the enemy, or anyone else, is just like us" (p. 248).
Yet we believe that even a shallow reading of McNamara's (1996) own riveting and moving
history of the Vietnam War, In Retrospect, makes clear that the problem could not have
been the following of the rational model, because it was not used.7To help you decide whether
it was used or not, we will briefly delineate the rational model. We will then present the minicase,
McNamara's Retrospective: Rational Decision Making?
The Rational Model
The rational model suggests the determination, clarification, weighting, and specification of
goals/objectives/values (in other words, of the ends). Next, all plausible, available alternative
means should be listed and their likelihood of achieving the ends carefully scrutinized. All relevant
consequences and reactions (including side-effects, spillovers, and externalities) would be
forecast. Then methods are to be ranked, and the most appropriate method and implementing
agent(s) chosen, to achieve the most desirable outcome. Decisions should then be made about how
to measure success, gather feedback, and evaluate the policy. Review would happen as the policy
environment is scanned, changes noted, and adjustments (or even policy termination) occur.
All of this is to happen with analysts operating with stony neutrality, robotlike efficiency,
and no politics to taint the expert's choices. In essence, the rational model is about the following:
Gathering sufficientdata and expert analysis.
Understandingthe problem (includingits seriousness,scope, and sociopoliticalhistory).
Discerning and operationalizing goals with clarity and precision so as to make them
achievableand prioritized.
Intense and thorough thinking so that the ends drive the selection of the means.
Reasoned choicebased on calculation,comparison,and cost-benefitratios' so as to maximize
the probability of the effective and efficient attainment of the determined objectives.
In addition, the rational model assumes that more information is always better, that the cognitive
limits of our brains are a bad thing, and that providing decision makers with more
choices is a good thing.
Figure 2-1 shows a policy decision that hinges on rational analysis. Presumably, an
objective expert would have studied the problem and gathered facts to analyze. Goals would
have been carefully thought through, articulated, and operationalized so that the costs and
benefits of the alternative means evaluated are relevant to the desired ends.' In this example,
only two alternatives policies are being weighed, but in the rational model all possible alternatives
are considered. If all of this happens accordingly, theoretically the decisional teetertotter
will tilt toward the policy most likely to produce the optimal outcome. Of course, later
policy evaluation will review how the policy is working and begin the process all over again.
The following mini-case quotes exclusively and extensively from McNamara's tale. This
verbal. and roughly chronological, quote collage will allow you to decide for yourself if the
U.S. pursuit of the Vietnam War was hurt by, or perhaps would have been helped by, use of
the rational model.
'We can, however, criticize the attempt to use it, the resources devoted to trying to use it, the tactical policy
consequences of the attempt, and its power as an argument justifying a policy that was arguably not rational.
'Chapter g, "The Positivist Toolbox," has a thorough discussion of cost-benefit analysis (CBA).
'Once again, see Chapter g for a discussion of cost-benefit analyses.