> What McNamara didn’t keep track of was the narrative of the war, the meaning that it had both within the military forces of each side, but also in the civilia

> What McNamara didn’t keep track of was the narrative of the war, the meaning that it had both within the military forces of each side, but also in the civilian populations of the nations involved. I'm probably not following and not saying it's easy but aren't there some metrics you could track that with? How was it determined/measured later that the meaning was important? Couldn't you at least do polls in your own country?