Obsolescence and creative destruction

Zenpundit has a a (typically) interesting post on Henry Adams today. In it, he articulates better than I could something that's been bothering me a long time:

Reading Foreign Affairs is often a depressing sojurn into the expositions of men who are anachronisms before their time, left behind by globalization and war in the prime of their careers and yet are unwilling to recognize that their comfortable old ideas provide few solutions to new problems.

It's sad, if predictable, that so many who call for "creative destruction" elsewhere in the world are so unwilling to reconsider their own positions.

He then links to Barnett's recent discussion of the depolitization (read CYA) of the NSC. From Barnett:

When Rice came in with George, the NSC embraced the Scowcroft "we're-just-here-on-background" model. The staff I interacted with were all the same. I called them the "Joe Fridays." They'd come, they'd take notes, and that was it. They had no ideology to speak of. They were responsible for nothing. They just coordinated.

Now, there are some advantages to that approach. Consider what happened with the anything-but-apolitical NSC during Iran-Contra. But in a larger sense the NSC can't be apolitical, because security is always political. Taking the protective coloration of gray bureaucrats may be fine for a career, but not for quality policymaking.