Finally, America lost two giants toward the end of the year. I was privileged to call both former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor friends. Like his close friend, former Secretary of State George Shultz, Kissinger died shortly after his 100th birthday. He was best known for playing the “China card” to drive a wedge in the Sino-Soviet relationship; ending the Vietnam War, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize; and managing Cold War relations with the Soviet Union.
Kissinger’s “balance-of-power” realpolitik certainly had its detractors, especially owing to civilian causalities in Cambodia, Vietnam, and East Timor. But history will mark him (along with Shultz) among America’s greatest diplomats – together with Dean Acheson, George Kennan, and George Marshall, who helped President Harry Truman establish the post-World War II economic and security commons.
O’Connor, the first female justice, was pragmatic, conservative, humble, charming, and tough, but never mean. Had she been a liberal Democrat, more statues and public infrastructure would bear her name. As the swing vote on the Court for decades, she often rejected absolutist positions on hot-button issues such as abortion and affirmative action and fashioned compromises that a large majority of Americans could accept.
Both continued to contribute their remarkable talents long after government service. While Kissinger advised world leaders and wrote influential books at a pace that would stun even the most prolific younger author, O’Connor promoted the civics education that has been dangerously disappearing from K-12 (and college) education curricula. We can only hope a new generation of thinkers and doers of their caliber will soon emerge to help guide a fractious nation through turbulent times.
Michael J. Boskin is professor of economics at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was chairman of George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1989 to 1993, and headed the so-called Boskin Commission, a congressional advisory body that highlighted errors in official US inflation estimates.