George H.W. Bush on Henry Kissinger: ‘Dictatorial’

Here’s an interesting excerpt from The China Diary of George H.W. Bush: The Making of a Global President. This is Bush writing on Saturday, November 20, 1974: Kissinger is an extremely complicated guy. He is ungracious, he yells at his staff, he is intolerable in terms of human feelings. Dictatorial. ‘Get people here.’ ‘Have those ...

Here's an interesting excerpt from The China Diary of George H.W. Bush: The Making of a Global President. This is Bush writing on Saturday, November 20, 1974:

Here’s an interesting excerpt from The China Diary of George H.W. Bush: The Making of a Global President. This is Bush writing on Saturday, November 20, 1974:

Kissinger is an extremely complicated guy. He is ungracious, he yells at his staff, he is intolerable in terms of human feelings. Dictatorial. ‘Get people here.’ ‘Have those people here,’ ‘Where are they?’ ‘Why do I need these papers?’ ‘Where are my papers?’ And yet all those petty little unpleasant characteristics fade away when you hear him discussing the world situation. He comes alive in public. Walk up the steps and the salute rings out from the PLA guard. He literally is so alive within, you can see it on the outside very clearly. He is like a politician with a roar of a crowd on election eve or the athlete running out at the 50-yard line just before the kickoff. The public turns him on.

"He does a first-class job on that whole press operation," Bush assesed. But "clearly he is not an administrator."

The book, edited by Texas A&M historian Jeffrey A. Engel, comes out next Wednesday.

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