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The much overused quote from Nixon's memoirs captures the popular perception of the two men from different backgrounds — the "Odd Couple" — who jointly engineered some of the most spectacular breakthroughs in US foreign policy during the Cold War era: "The combination was unlikely — the grocer's son from Whittier and the refugee from Hitler's Germany, the politician and the academic. But our differences helped make the partnership work."¹ Nixon's point was, it seems, twofold. First, it was to underline that the two men were products of the American dream; neither inherited wealth or position, each worked hard to achieve what they did. This, of course, was the sometimes forgotten but indisputable case. Unlike his 1960 rival, John F. Kennedy, Nixon came from nothing and took immense pride in this fact. Unlike most of his predecessors, Kissinger was not part of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) elite that had dominated America's foreign policy-makers in the early part of the Cold War. Second and related, Nixon affirmed that they were both outsiders. Nixon's was a personality that did not easily fit one's image of an American politician. He was neither particularly charming up close nor did he have many real friends among America's political elite. "I"m an introvert in an extrovert profession", Nixon once said of himself.² Meanwhile, Kissinger's Jewish background made him an outsider in the higher circles of the US government of the late 1960s. Being a naturalized American helped little; speaking with a German accent was not necessarily an asset. Perhaps because they were outsiders (or at least perceived themselves as such) both were, by most accounts, chronically insecure no matter how much they achieved.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137500960_3

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