Who was the worst Secretary of Defense?

[pbrower2a]

In the 1970s, Rumsfeld was a fine Secretary of Defense, reforming the shabby US military that had been badly mauled in Vietnam. He was then young enough to have contemporaries who could see him as a peer.

Under Dubya he became the excessively-trusting elder figure whom others could use in their intrigues while feigning loyalty. When one considers what cutthroats the neo-cons are, and that he was typically twenty years or more older than the senior officers -- he was out of touch.

I don't know what it is about political figures born in the 1930s -- that they are too blindly trusting? They were well protected from the worst of the Great Depression and World War II, and they proved trustworthy subordinates in the late 1940s and later. When they did get considerable power, they were dealing with people similarly trusting -- and trustworthy. As their peers retired or died off, a few of them remained as potential leaders -- but they depended upon the trustworthiness of subordinates.