Jimmy Carter

Tuesday

Alex Burghart

The mixed legacy of Zbigniew Brzezinski, strategist of the Cold War

In the autumn of 1938, within nine weeks of each other, two boys arrived in New York, fleeing the gathering storm: a 15-year-old Jewish German and a ten-year-old Catholic from Poland. Both would repay the mortal debt they owed by dedicating their lives to the Land of the Free. The older boy was, of course, Henry Kissinger, later Grand High Poobah to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The younger was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser from 1977 to 1981 and the subject of a magisterial biography bythe Financial Times’sWashingtonsupremo, Edward Luce. From the first, Zbigniew Brzezinski (pronounced ‘ZbigNieff BreshinSki’, as Carter helpfully informed his team) sat in Kissinger’s

Wednesday

Taki

Why the world needs Richard Nixon

Gstaad The Speccie arrived just in time for me to read about the rudeness of one Lyndon Johnson, then vice-president, toward Lady Antonia Fraser. A later occupant of the White House, Jimmy Carter, was not as discourteous as the Texan, but in somewhat similar circumstances he left the poor little Greek boy standing alone surrounded by secret service heavies. This took place at a grand New York dinner party given in Carter’s honour by a real-estate lady, and I was seated with Norman Mailer who was busy trying to make whoopee with my ex sister-in-law, Betsy Kaiser. Norman and I had talked about democracy at the start of the dinner,