ALMOST every night in Washington seems to be Henry Kissinger night.
His presence enlivens any occasion. This season's social lion, Soviet
Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, asked for an invitation to a party that
Marion Javits was throwing for Kissinger. In the course of the evening,
Yevtushenko had a private conversation with Kissinger, then slipped off
his wristwatch and pressed it into Kissinger's hand—confirming who
knows what international arrangement. The Kissinger wit can always be counted on. As a guest speaker at the
Washington Press Club's annual congressional dinner last week,
Kissinger mocked his reputation as a secret swinger. Noting that Gloria
Steinem had said that she “is not now and never has been a girl friend”
of his, Kissinger declared that he was not discouraged. “After all, she
did not say that if nominated she would not accept, or if elected she
would not serve.” Power has made Kissinger blossom.
When he was a professor of government at Harvard, his colleagues
appreciated his wit, but they never considered him the life of any
party. When Kissinger first took his job under Nixon, he was tense and
brusque. Now that he is solidly established as undisputed boss of
foreign affairs, he is more relaxed than ever, and he is visibly—some
would say ostentatiously—enjoying himself. ∙ Topic No. 1 is the women he escorts on both coasts. His favorite is
Nancy Maginnes, a tall, blonde aide to Governor Rockefeller. But there
are a host of others, mostly actresses like Jill St. John, Mario Thomas
and Samantha Eggar, and little-known starlets whose famous date has
made them a lot better known. When he goes to San Clemente, Kissinger
often takes time off to drive to Hollywood—a place he never visited
before he joined the White House—and enjoy parties at the home of Los
Angeles Times Hollywood Columnist Joyce Haber and her TV producer
husband Douglas Cramer. “I go out with actresses,” he says, “because
I'm not very apt to marry one.” Once he even confided: “It's
astonishing, you know. These starlets I go out with aren't even sexy.”
In a burst of envious outrage, Manhattan's Village Voice accused
Kissinger of being a secret square posing as a swinger. But he is clearly comfortable ir his new role. Ever since he wrote his
Ph.D. thesis on Metternich, he has admired statesmen who combined a
cul tivated life-style with the shrewd exercise of diplomacy.
Kissinger is trying to revive some of the bygone elegance of public
life; grimness is for the ideologues and zealots who haven't made the
world such a troubled place to live in. He has personal knowledge of 20th century grimness. As a Jewish boy in
Nazi Germany, he knew persecution. After his family fled to New York in
1938, he kept to himself. Today a streak of suspicion seems to underlie
all that he does. His jokes about his paranoia have an uncomfortable
edge of truth; his genuinely humorous self deprecation often gets out
of hand. Ht admits he has a problem. “I have a first rate mind but a
third-rate intuition about people.”
