Morality and Power

In 1976 Ronald Reagan confronted President Gerald Ford with one of the most grueling primary challenges any incumbent president has ever faced. The fight went to the floor of the Republican convention, where the Reagan faction inserted a platform plank on “morality in foreign policy,” in an implicit swipe at Ford’s “détente” with the Soviet Union. The move was widely seen as an attempt to humiliate and repudiate Ford’s secretary of state — Henry Kissinger.

Eight years earlier, Richard Nixon had plucked Kissinger from relative obscurity in Harvard’s history department to become national-security adviser. With his bewitching charm and mesmerizing grasp of history, Kissinger was an instant sensation. In just a few years, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine no fewer than eleven times. His area of expertise — European diplomatic history — prepared him for international negotiation, and he threw himself into the work with élan.