At the age of 99 Henry Kissinger has just come out with another book, this one right in my wheelhouse. It’s titled: Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy. I will have more to say about the book in a later post. For today all I will do is contrast Kissinger the writer in his late 90s with Kissinger the writer in his mid-50s.
These are excerpts from random paragraphs, both about Richard Nixon, from two of Kissinger’s books. This first is from the book just published, Leadership.
Richard Nixon was one of the most controversial presidents in American history and the only president obliged to resign from office. He also had a seminal impact on the foreign policy of his period and its aftermath, as a president who reshaped a failing world order at the height of the Cold War. After five and a half years in office, Nixon had ended American involvement in Vietnam; established the United States as the dominant external power in the Middle East; and imposed a triangular dynamic on the previously bipolar Cold War through the opening to China, ultimately putting the Soviet Union at a decisive disadvantage.
The second excerpt is from another book Kissinger wrote, this one published in 1979. It is titled, White House Years. Here is how he then described the president with whom he so closely collaborated.
There was another fanfare and President-elect Richard Nixon appeared at the top of the Capitol stairs. He was dressed in a morning coat, his pant legs as always a trifle short. His jaw jutted defiantly and yet he seemed uncertain, as if unsure that he was really there. He exuded at once relief and disbelief. He had arrived at last after the most improbable of careers and one of the most extraordinary feats of self-discipline in American political history. He seemed exultant, as if he could hardly wait for the [inauguration] ceremony to be over so that he could begin to implement the dream of a lifetime. Yet he also appeared somehow spent, even fragile, like a marathon runner who has exhausted himself in a great race.
Do you see what I see? Two paragraphs that could hardly be more different, even though they were written by same man about the same man. The second paragraph, the one written by Kissinger in middle age, sings. The first paragraph, written by Kissinger in old age, does not. It does not sing. The prose is pedestrian, almost leaden.
None of this is to say that Leadership is bad. Not at all. Nor is it even to say the writing is bad. It is not. It is ordinary, no better, no worse. This though is in stark contrast to Kissinger’s White House Years, which is wonderfully well observed and wonderfully well written. Truth is that Kissinger was one of the greatest writers of all American statesmen – in his prime.