Terry Gross (Fresh Air) tonight broadcast an interview from a number of years ago when his book was published, and then Errol Morris, Director of the aforementioned documentary movie.

Listening, I found myself reflecting on how experience in some ways breeds wisdom, but that experience also shapes a distorted lens through which we see the present and predict the future.   McNamara addressed that very well during his interview with Terry Gross, on how their experiences of WWII, the recognition, in hindsight, that failure on the part of the West to act sooner contributed to it becoming a world war, and then the rapid moves by the Soviet Union immediately post-WWII to move into Poland, the Bulkans, Austria Hungary and East Germany informed their views regarding Vietnam and the threat, and that even when he and others reached the conclusion that the battle in Vietnam could not be won by combat, intense fear that to simply pull out would lead to WWIII contrained them from advocating for a pull-out. He and others of his generation in power could see the old paradigm wasn't working, but could not see their way into a new paradigm.

How often have many of us found ourselves in the same position? I think the Obama administration does have at least one foot in a new paradigm. I am not always happy with it, because I am somewhat stuck in an old liberal paradigm that I see no longer works, but don't have a clear enough sense of a new paradigm to step readily into it.