When Donald Met Henry
m starting to feel a little bit like Jeffrey Tambor, who in this 1981 scene tells Barney Miller that it all leads back to Henry Kissinger and the Trilateral Commission. “The whole master plan is exposed…. Henry Kissinger, have you heard of him?” Nation readers have been hearing a lot about the 92-year-old Kissinger lately. First Hillary Clinton cited his approval as a recommendation for the Oval Office; which Bernie Sanders then jumped on to criticize Clinton’s interventionism; then, just last week, Barack Obama’s Pentagon presented Kissinger with a high honor. Now, news comes that Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has met with Kissinger. Details about what they talked about are as of yet unknown. Yet as Tambor tells Barney Miller: “No matter who wins in November, they have their man in the White House!”
Kissinger has long had his man in the White House, a fact that is less testament to his influence than to his ability to accommodate to every right-wing lurch. In the 1960s, as a rising defense intellectual, Kissinger was a Nelson Rockefeller man, firmly entrenched in the center-right establishment. When he attended the infamous 1964 Republican convention in San Francisco, he was horrified by Goldwater supporters, whom he likened to fascists. Four years later, according to journalists Marvin and Bernard Kalb, he “wept” when Nixon won the Republican nomination. “Richard Nixon is the most dangerous, of all the men running, to have as president,” Kissinger said; “That man Nixon is not fit to be president.”
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