You’re a Republican thinking of running for president. It’s a dangerous world, and your foreign policy credentials are a little thin.

Time to see Henry Kissinger.


Scott Walker did it. So did Marco Rubio and Chris Christie. Rick Perry paid a visit in September — he even tweeted a photo to prove it.

“It was an honor to speak with Dr. Kissinger today and hear his thoughts on America’s foreign policy challenges,” tweeted the then-Texas governor.

Rubio has “met with Kissinger a couple of times in the past, and always appreciates his insights,” says a spokesman for the Florida senator, adding that Rubio has been reading Kissinger’s latest book, “World Order.”

At 91 years old, the former secretary of state, national security adviser and intellectual-cum-celebrity has come to occupy a unique place in the foreign policy firmament. Though some historians blame him for countless deaths in places like Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh, Kissinger is more revered than ever in Washington. He has become a Yoda-like figure, bestowing credibility and a statesman’s aura to politicians of both parties, including ones who may not actually share his worldview.

They may want more than a message: A Kissinger endorsement could be a major boost in a crowded GOP field. Though he often sits out primary contests, Kissinger backed John McCain in December 2007 when the Arizona Republican was still fending off other challengers. (He even granted a much-needed private audience to McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, the next year.)

“People treat him as an oracle,” says James Mann, a resident fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of several books on foreign policy. “Candidates running for president like to be seen with or described as having talked to Kissinger, because they think it sends a message that they themselves are serious about foreign policy — when in fact they may not even know much about what Henry Kissinger believes or what he has done.”

Kissinger’s many admirers call him brilliant, with an unmatched grasp of history. They revere him for diplomatic feats like masterminding Richard Nixon’s history-altering 1972 opening to China.

But the GOP’s Kissinger crush is also surprising in some ways. The man who largely guided American foreign policy for a decade under Nixon and then Gerald Ford is a longtime proponent of the “realist” school of foreign policy. Realists prioritize order and stability above human rights, democracy and other internal affairs in foreign countries. Many of Kissinger’s GOP admirers, including McCain, champion democracy promotion and military action to prevent atrocities.

And Kissinger disciples like Walker, Rubio and Perry may not share their tutor’s support for diplomacy with Iran and engagement with China, nor his caution against “posturing” against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Even more surprising, however, is Kissinger’s embrace by Democrats, including providing private counsel to Barack Obama. A batch of White House visitor records released on Jan. 31 show that Kissinger visited the president in the Oval Office on Oct. 22. Unlike the Republicans who brag about their proximity to Kissinger, the White House did not publicize this meeting and would not characterize its substance. Kissinger’s office did not comment for this story.

But other Democrats haven’t been shy about their admiration for a man who was long reviled by the left, who regularly counseled George W. Bush and Dick Cheney during the 2000s, who endorsed John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 — and whom credible historians say has not been held accountable for reprehensible actions during his Nixon administration tenure.

During his confirmation hearing to be secretary of state, John Kerry cited Kissinger’s book “Diplomacy” as a “superb” guide to the modern world and met with him privately as the Obama administration built its later-aborted case for bombing Syria in September 2013. Last fall, Hillary Clinton wrote a glowing Washington Post review of Kissinger’s late-2014 tome, “World Order,” which she called “vintage Kissinger, with his singular combination of breadth and acuity along with his knack for connecting headlines to trend lines.”

Most unlikely of all, perhaps, is the kinship between Obama’s close adviser and United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power, with the Cold War-era diplomat five decades her elder. Last April ESPN tagged along with Power, a die-hard Red Sox fan, and Kissinger, a Yankees lover, for a trip to the ballpark in which the two likened their sports rivalry to their divergent worldviews. The two hold nearly polar opposite views of the role human rights should play in foreign policy, making Power what some call an idealist to Kissinger’s realist. At Yankee Stadium, those differences were papered over with banter: “Wait until Samantha says ‘realpolitik,’” Kissinger joked. “It means: He’s a German and watch out for him.”

But the partnership between Kissinger and Obama officials can be serious business. Still connected around the globe by dint of his reputation and business activities as the founder of Kissinger Associates, a lucrative Manhattan-based international consulting firm, Kissinger is a constant traveler and source of valuable information from abroad.

For instance, Kissinger has been an important — if informal — conduit of information about Putin. The former U.S. diplomat is among a small handful of Americans granted audiences with the Russian leader. Kissinger has reported back to Washington on his contacts, including at least once directly to Obama’s national security adviser, according to Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Moscow until last year.

Before his occasional meetings with Putin, Kissinger would first visit McFaul in Spaso house, the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Moscow, where photos of Kissinger visiting the same building in the early 1970s adorn the walls. He would “find out what the pulse of the [current U.S.] policy was” before seeing the Russian leader. Then, after seeing Putin, Kissinger would report on his contact back to officials in Washington.

“I was totally amazed at Henry’s vigor, both intellectually and politically,” McFaul added.

He has sometimes undertaken more specific assignments, as when, in August 2011 Hillary Clinton turned to Kissinger amid an international crisis following a bloody Israeli assault on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid flotilla. Clinton enlisted Kissinger to urge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to apologize to Turkey in the name of preserving an important regional relationship. (The account, described in Clinton’s memoir “Hard Choices,” does not say how the message was received, but Netanyahu did not apologize until much later.)

The cross-partisan relationship between Clinton and Kissinger is particularly notable. Soon after Clinton’s review of his book appeared, Kissinger told USA Today that Clinton “ran the State Department in the most effective way that I’ve ever seen.” He soon followed up by telling NPR that Clinton would be “a good president,” adding that he planned to vote Republican.

Foreign policy analysts say the friendliness illustrates the extent to which Obama, for all the idealism he once represented, has pursued a cold-eyed policy of realism in the classic Kissinger style — for instance, through his unwillingness to intervene more aggressively to prevent atrocities in Syria’s civil war.

Modern foreign policy debates are less about partisanship and more “between people who focus primarily on states and people who focus on people,” says Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former top official in Clinton’s State Department who now heads the New America Foundation. “He sees the world as a chessboard.”

Some historians are harsher, questioning whether Kissinger should be accepted in polite company at all, citing actions and statements he made in the Nixon and Ford administrations that stretched the concept of realism to cruel callousness. In 1975, for instance, Kissinger said that the U.S. “will be friends with” the Cambodian Khmer Rouge, adding: “They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way.” A Nixon Oval Office tape from 1973 recorded him expressing little sympathy for Jews trying to flee oppression in the former Soviet Union. “If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern,” Kissinger said.

“People in Washington have a remarkable ability not to ask questions about what their guest of honor actually did in Cambodia or Bangladesh,” says Gary J. Bass, a Princeton professor of politics and international affairs and author of “The Blood Telegram,” which is harshly critical of Kissinger for allowing thousands of preventable deaths during the 1971 creation of Bangladesh.

During his Jan. 28 testimony before McCain’s committee, Kissinger was partly encircled by a group of protesters with the anti-war group Code Pink, who held a banner and chanted slogans calling for his arrest as a “war criminal.” An outraged McCain threatened to have them arrested, calling one protester “low-life scum.”

Republicans like McCain are totally unmoved by the charges against Kissinger, and recent GOP candidates have welcomed his support. Romney was grateful for Kissinger’s backing in 2012, though — like so many others — couldn’t resist an impersonation of his German-born advocate’s distinctive accent. “I saw Dr. Kissinger” in New York, Romney said at a surreptitiously recorded 2012 fundraiser. “I said to him, ‘How are we perceived around the world?’ And he said one word: ‘ Veak!’”

As the 2016 campaign kicks off, a competition is already underway to gain Kissinger’s favor. One early favorite could be Chris Christie. As the former New Jersey governor later told The Washington Post’s Dan Balz for his book “Collision 2012,” Kissinger summoned him to his midtown Manhattan office in mid-2011 and urged him to run for president, saying he had a rare connection with voters. When Christie replied that he knew little about world affairs, his host told him not to worry. “We can work with you on that. Foreign policy is instinct, it’s character,” Christie recalled Kissinger saying.

But Kissinger — whom Bob Woodward once described as having “a powerful, largely invisible influence” over George W. Bush’s foreign policy — is also friendly with Bush’s brother Jeb. Last spring Kissinger told the Post that he would be “delighted” to see Jeb Bush run, calling the former Florida governor “experienced, moderate and thoughtful.”

Since Bush began signaling his intention to run for president in 2016 this winter, the two have not yet had a publicized meeting. If recent history is any guide, that tweet should be coming soon.