On September 1, 1972, David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" was published.

[NNadir]

1. We must remember that 1965 was only 20 years after a set of "best and brightest" were shown to have ended...

...the 2nd phase of the nearly continuous, with a 20 year tenuous pause, World War that began in 1914.

Then there was the invention of the "missile gap" that JFK used to put himself in the White House. The American public in the 1960s was proportionately less educated than the public today, although as is obvious from Trumpism, ignorance is still a powerful force in our political life. In those times, 20 years after the Manhattan Project achieved its goals, it was widely believed that intellectuals were competent to save the world.

John Kennedy, who I don't think had as powerful intellect as is sometimes attributed to him - although he was excellent at reading and delivering Ted Sorensen's text as speeches - having hung out at Harvard, played on the fascination with academic intellectuals, who may have been good at understanding some things, but far more narrow in others.

On reflection, I think Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam aside, was a great man, and I have never felt that Vietnam, such as it was, was a function of him paying too much attention to these narrow "great minds." He might have profited by listening more carefully to Rayburn.