A psychoanalyst could have a field day with any member of that trio, though perhaps with MacArthur most of all. He was carefree under enemy fire but lived much of his adult life under the reign of his controlling mother. He was an impeccable dresser who carried himself “as if he had a flagpole for a spine,” yet in the telling of his first wife he was an embarrassing sexual failure. Though he was regarded by many as a military genius, his career was punctuated by eye-popping blunders. And he spoke about himself in the third person.
