Back when the Vietnam War was raging, perhaps the only person more reviled than Richard Nixon by the radical Left was Henry Kissinger. The former National Security advisor and Secretary of State has served his adopted country with intelligence and indefatigable energy on and off for some five decades. He has, in one capacity or another, labored under six presidents. In return, he has been consistently abused by the Left. Old habits die hard. For no sooner had President Bush announced that he was appointing Mr. Kissinger to chair an independent, bipartisan inquiry into government actions prior to September 11 than the establishment Left accused Mr. Kissinger of—what? Financial peculation? Suspicious campaign contributions from hostile foreign powers? Lying? Obstructing the course of justice? No, no, we are not talking about the Bill and Hillary show. Henry Kissinger stood accused of consulting for corporate clients—and he would not tell us which ones.

Gosh. Of course, Mr. Kissinger runs a corporate consulting firm, so it might seem only natural that his clients would, in fact, be corporations. He refused to name those clients for the very sensible reasons that it was private information, that he had confidentiality agreements with many clients, and that the publicity would undoubtedly hurt his business. As the volume of criticism began rising, it became clear that the Left would not allow Mr. Kissinger to serve without destroying the business he had built up over the past few decades. Reluctantly, the seventy-nine-year-old statesman withdrew from contention, thus denying the inquiry the resource of his unparalleled experience.

The Wall Street Journal called the attack “Borking Henry Kissinger.” Exactly. The last time we checked, the transitive verb “to bork” had not made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. Here’s a working definition to be getting on with until Oxford catches up: “Bork, v. tr.: An ideological orchestrated assault upon the character, motivation, and abilities of an individual with the aim of preventing his election or appointment to public office.” As far as we know, no one has tallied the number of distinguished figures whose services the public has been denied because of the disgusting practices inaugurated when Robert Bork was nominated to a position on the Supreme Court. We suspect it would be an impressive if melancholy list—impressive because of the stature of the men and women denominated, melancholy because few if any survived the calumny well enough to serve the Republic in the role for which they were attacked. It is one more pyrrhic victory for the pygmies of the Left.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 21 Number 5
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