"I have always been regarded by the United States establishment as an oddball, and I am a strange mixture of a reactionary and a liberal," George Kennan said in a lengthy Encounter interview last September. "It is perfectly true that in my attitude toward what is going on in the United States and Western civilization . . . I am worried and profoundly pessimistic."
Long a student of Russia, Mr. Kennan w...
Stephen Hess
Twice I have served on White House staffs-at the end of one administration (1959-61) and at the beginning of another (1969). All presidencies, of course, are different. But one could hardly fail to observe differences that were exclusively a product of time. Beginnings and endings are different. There are differences of pace, attitude, objectives, and response, not only between adminis- trations but also within each one.
What follows is a composite portrait of a President over the...
Alexis de Tocqueville saw the American family, so different from the European, as an exemplar and bulwark of sober democracy.