Early evening. I stopped off at the Porcelain Company where they were hosting a book party for Princess Michael of Kent and her new book (you’ve already read about it here a few times) – The Serpent and the Moon. Princess Michael has been all over the United States and Canada promoting this history of a royal triangle in Renaissance France. On Thursday Pat Patterson and Muffie Miller have invited a hundred friends to lunch at Doubles in honor of the princess and her book and then on Friday there’s another book party in a friend’s home. On Saturday she returns to London for a much needed rest after almost seven weeks of touring.

I got there early because I was going on to a dinner at The Plaza. The princess drew a big crowd including Inger Elliot, Jill Spaulding, Louis Bofferding, Robert Couturier, Doug Cramer and Hugh Bush, Audrey Gruss, Catharine and David Hamilton, Ashton Hawkins, Alex Hitz, Jane Landrigan, Ken Lane, Michel Langlais and Ernesto Alvarez, Harriett and Noel Levine, David Beer, Lee Thaw, Geoffrey Bradfield, Gill Fuller, Ian and Ellen Graham, Ambassador John Loeb and Sharon Handler, Mary McFadden, Hannah Pakula, Peter Rogers, Anne Slater and John Cahill, Raul Suarez, Prince Michel de Yugoslavie, Her Grace, the Duchess of Marborough, Iris Love, Kay Meehan, Heather Cohane, Michael Selleck, Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia, Princess Alexandra of Greece, Jonathan Marder and on and on into the night.

After about fifteen minutes, I joined Inger Elliot and walked over to the Plaza where the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute were having a dinner honoring the birthdays (both October 15) of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (who was 87) and John Kenneth Galbraith (who was 96).

Professor Galbraith, who lives in Cambridge, could not travel for medical reasons but Catherine Atwater Galbraith, his wife of sixty-seven years and his children came, as did Professor Schlesinger’s sons and his wife Alexandra. As did some very distinguished men and women associated with the causes and the politics of the two men including former senators George McGovern and Gary Hart, Bill and Judith Moyers, George and Kay Stevens, John Brademas, Kevin and Gail Buckley, Schuyler and Catie Chapin, Eric Alterman, Louis Auchincloss, Ambassador and Mrs. William vanden Heuvel, Walter and Betsy Cronkite, Osborn Elliot, Geraldine Ferraro and John Zaccaro, Gillian and Ted Sorenson, Joan Kaplan Davidson, Eileen Finletter, Ambassador Richard and Danielle Gardner, Mrs. Frank Church.

Also joining the more than 350 well-wishers were Liz Fondaras, Stephen and Freddie Friedman, Dorothy Zinberg, Dr. and Mrs. Henry Kissinger, Tom Pulling, Hannah Pakula, Kathy Sloane, Katrina vanden Heuvel and Steven Cohen, Dotson Rader, Ambassador and Mrs. Henry Kimelman, Bernard and Audrey Rapoport, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. (Tobie), Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Ross, Alan Brinkley, Meera Ghandi, John Whitehead, Ellen and Dr. Dick Levine, Bill Rollnick and Nancy Ellison, Alexis Gregory.

The evening celebrated the Age of Roosevelt which brought to Americans all the great social programs that have sustained almost three generations including Social Security, the Minimum Wage, Workman’s Compensation and what Franklin Roosevelt in a speech in 1941 called the Four Freedoms: Freedom of Speech and Expression, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.

George McGovern

Christopher Breiseth, President and CEO of the Institute, opened the evening, introducing William vanden Heuvel who first introduced Bernie Rapoport, Honorary co-chair of the dinner.

Mr. Rapoport is a self-made billionaire (insurance) from Texas who has been a major backer of the Democrats for more than a half century. He recalled his childhood and the business practices he learned early on when he’d play marbles with a friend. “If I started with thirty marbles and he started with thirty marbles, and I won all his marbles, I’d give him back ten. Why? To keep the game going.” He quoted Benito Mussolini who said that corporations and governments acting together is fascism. “When too few have too much and too many have too little, that is not a sustainable society.”

We then heard from Professor Galbraith’s son Peter who was ambassador to Croatia and to Iraq, then Professor Schlesinger’s son Stephen, Meera Gandhi, historian Alan Brinkley, Ted Sorenson and Dr. Kissinger. Although Dr. Kissinger comes from the other side of the political dialogue, he started out as a professor at Harvard when both Galbraith and Schlesinger were there and has maintained a lifelong association with both.

As young man who had fled Hitler with his parents, he revered FDR. He told us that “before I became Henry Kissinger, I was a historian.” One day crossing the Harvard Yard, he ran into his colleague Arthur Schlesinger. Schlesinger gave him a letter he received from Tom Finletter, then a cabinet officer in the Truman Administration that was a discussion about nuclear policy. Schlesinger asked him, Kissinger, his thoughts about it.
The young historian took it home, read it, and wrote a response to Arthur Schlesinger who was impressed enough that he passed it on to Finletter. Finletter, also impressed, in turn passed it on to Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of Foreign Policy. Armstrong was duly impressed and asked Professor Kissinger to write something for the magazine.

That simple editor’s request of the historian, prompted by a letter to one man and passed on to another and then to another, was the first step that eventually became a leap for Professor Kissinger from academe into government and his present place in the world.

Last night, in concluding, Henry Kissinger said that it was “Civility, comedy and common destiny which informs my relationships with the honorees,” and further stated that “societies thrive not by their divisions but by their reconciliations.”

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