Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger dominated their era as few other men have. Their bold moves brought the world closer to peace. But they also ushered in cruel and vindictive policies that more than offset their achievement’s. They were as unlikely a pair as ever held high office. Kissinger found Nixon “a very odd man…. a very unpleasant man….so nervous… an artificial man…. [who] hated to meet new people.” He found it strange that such a loner “became a politician. He really dislikes people.” White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman spent a great deal of time with Nixon but said he “didn’t see me as a person, or even...as a human being….To this day he doesn’t know how many children I have nor anything else about my private life.”
Kissinger and Nixon were privately contemptuous of each other, fighting incessantly over who would get credit for their achievements. Kissinger disparaged Nixon as “that madman,” “our drunken friend,” and “the meatball mind,” while fawning all over him in his presence. Nixon referred to Kissinger as his “Jew boy” and called him “psychopathic.” But the madman and the psychopath shared a vision of the United States as global hegemon. Nixon considered Woodrow Wilson the “greatest President of this century” because he had “the greatest vision of America’s world role” Wilson had proclaimed the United States to be the world’s savior. Kissinger similarly observed, “Our experience led us to look upon ourselves and what we did as having universal meaning, a relevance that extended beyond national boundaries to encompass the well-being of all mankind. America was not itself unless it had a meaning beyond itself. This is why Americans have always seen their role in the world as the outward manifestation of an inward state of grace” But neither Kissinger nor Nixon understood that the basic decency that should have guided the United States’ exercise of power. Lawrence Eagleburger, who had worked closely with Kissinger over many years, observed, “Henry is a balance-of-power thinker. He deeply believes in stability. These kinds of objectives are antithetical to the American experience. Americans… want to pursue a set of moral principles. Henry does not have an intrinsic feel for the American political system, and he does not start with the same basic values and assumptions.” Nixon and Kissinger would suffer different fates. Nixon would be brought low by pettiness, venality, suspicion, and ambition. Kissinger, though equally flawed, would win the Nobel Peace Prize. But ugly accusations and the threat of indictment for war crimes would haunt him the remainder of his days. ~ The Untold History of the United States
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