It was before the Gipper had arrived on the scene with his clarity of thought. Kennan's encirclement policy worked as long as we needed it.
Yes, Kennan seems to also be an enigma wrapped in a riddle, as Churchill described the Soviet Union. On one hand, Kennan wanted to contain the USSR with "unalterable counterforce at every point where they [USSR] show signs of encroaching", but to accomplish this "politically rather than militarily". At the same time warning that; "Soviet power was impervious to the logic of reason, and highly sensitive to the logic of force.
In many ways, Kennan was a classic "Intellectual". He knows a lot about what he knows. He does not know however, exactly what to do with what he knows. In the end he presents as much confusion as clarity.
He was correct when he stated that "If, consequently, anything were....to disrupt the Communist Party....Russia might be changed overnight from one of the strongest to one of the weakest and most pitiable of national societies". Prophetic indeed, but not a conclusion that any conservative with more than rudimentary knowledge of the Soviet system did not think already.