Politics and Economics - period ended 5.15.2006

Politics and Economics/Religious Faith/Mysticism//Bright and wrong/Los Angeles Times/Los Angeles/CA/USA/14-May-06//...Presidents often lean on intellectuals for advice. But history says that's not always so smart. .....Perhaps more important, (George) Kennan (a Sovietologist) was quickly relieved of his duties. Dean Acheson, who became secretary of State to President Truman in 1949, eased Kennan out of his job less than two years after he was given it. Acheson, the architect of American policy in the early Cold War, said Kennan had an "abstract" sense of the national interest and a "Quaker gospel." Kennan, wrote Acheson, had a "mystical attitude" toward the realities of power, "which he did not understand." ...