How to become Henry Kissinger

...You should explain that it is the key to managing change in the global business environment...

...It's a long climb to the top to be the brains behind God, but this time, at least, you have an eternity...

...The answer is easy: yourself...

...As the years go on, you will want to discover religion, so that all your pronouncements have a tone of prophecy...

...In your twenties, your friends were fellow wonks...

...That means you must establish yourself as a teller of uncomfortable truths...

...Give a knowing grin...

...Just remember that you are going to publish four books during your lifetime and you have to choose the right publishers...

...You will have to attend conferences at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Munich and talk seriously with old men who are retired diplomats and miserable about it...

...How to Become Henry Kissinger By David Brooks In this country, any boy or girl can grow up, get on the speaking circuit, and deliver after-dinner speeches to conventions filled with shoe salesmen for $50,000 a pop...

...China experts have plenty of TV bookings when there is a crisis, but there are years and years when attention is elsewhere...

...Foreign policy issues have higher prestige, and at the summit are the foreign-policy issues that involve banks (during the Cold War, issues involving missiles were higher, but they have since fallen...

...You are so rarefied that it does your image good to appear once a year on the Jay Leno show, and every couple of years you will play yourself on Friends...

...You are now in your prime oped writing years...

...The people with principles thereby commit mutual suicide, and the path is clear for a safe nominee like you...

...You know because now your friends are mostly glamorous ladies on the charity circuit...

...Your only TV invitations will come from obscure cable channels whose penetration is to 35 homes in North Dakota...

...But now you have reached the top and can be assured a good table at the Metropolitan Museum's annual ball...

...Only leak those of your memos that undercut the entire intellectual premise of the administration in which you serve...

...If possible, insist in your public statements that you stand for "true conservatism," arguing that the conservatives of the day have betrayed their creed rightly understood...

...Your goal at industry-group talks is to convey an air of insider knowledge while stating the blindingly obvious: "Al Greenspan was telling me the other day- you know Al, the Fed chairman, goes out with Andrea Mitchell-he was telling me the other day that there are three branches of government, executive, legislative, and judicial...

...That means you must convey an image that is more and more rarefied as you appear on media that are more and more populist...

...This will elevate you to the status of Powerful Factotum...

...At this point in your life, you may be offered a slot as a columnist for a newspaper or magazine...

...The End of Gardening, perhaps, or The End of Time, the thesis being that no matter when you leave for an appointment you are always late...

...They bring you into meetings just as deal negotiations are underway, to dazzle the various parties...

...You will plagiarize your friendships...

...After it is published call him back and report that "the piece really caused a stir in the White House...

...And Newt confirmed it...

...You'll imagine performing heroic feats in his view...

...At Treasury you can make the contacts...

...Age 47: By now you've got a quasi-academic job (go to the School for Advanced International Studies, Brookings isn't sexy enough), a consulting business, and some offers to sit on the boards of medium-sized companies...

...It's the etiquette of opinion-holding that matters most...

...Make sure your agent lines up no more than 50 speaking engagements a year...

...You mostly leak to columnists...

...You will coordinate the drafting of the final report...

...This is awesome power, and former European prime ministers will be kissing up to you on a regular basis...

...There are many jobs in the international advice industry that carry a lot of power, but senior people don't want to do them because they involve a lot of drudgery...

...But you then refine your technique...

...Age 68: By now you are a Colossus...

...Age 24: At this stage in your life you are fully qualified to be offering advice to presidents and senators...

...At first you make the mistake of leaking discrete news tidbits to the beat reporters...

...You'll also want to publish your first book...

...But you can't celebrate yourself directly...

...Norton...

...Whatever it is you are talking about, warn your audience that the current situation is unsustainable and that terrible things will happen unless painful and courageous measures are taken...

...Your goal is to produce one of those titles-The End of Ideology being the first of them, back in 1959-that are remembered for decades, even if the contents of the book are forgotten...

...The producer will beam, and Tim Russert will practically burst into song...

...Age 64: At this age, unfortunately, you are going to have to take a few years off and serve as secretary of state...

...As such, you spend 60 percent of your time talking to the media...

...By appearing gravely concerned you will lend yourself an impressive dignity...

...You could choose a country, maybe China, to be an expert on...

...In the old days, it was easy...

...You decide to become an expert on capital flows to nations in transition...

...Remember, it doesn't enhance your reputation to leak little things...

...All it takes is hard work, dedication, and a reputation for global omniscience...

...In order to get as many bookings as possible, you will have to transcend any past specialty you might have claimed...

...Now you will simply be an expert in history, like Michael Beschloss, or foreign affairs, like Zbigniew Brzezinski...

...you are a Cultural Institution...

...God, it transpires, has a staff of angels to advise Him on divine affairs...

...As you became successful you hung around savvy lawyers...

...That will give you an aura (even if you don't really understand currency matters yourself...

...The president's name isn't Friedman, but you know that your real boss is Thomas L. Friedman, the foreign policy columnist at the New York Times...

...But foreign policy experts have long fallow periods...

...A regular column is nothing but slavery...

...At the tail end of the administration you might want to arrange a transfer to Treasury...

...There will also be some onerous duties at this stage in your life...

...You will fall in love with this famous boss and believe he can make your career...

...To reach this spot you will have to make several crucial decisions...

...This means you have to have a management catch-phrase to show that you are on the cutting edge...

...If some crisis comes along and you see a chance to win a Nobel, you can get something out of these years...

...It is a sign that they are sensible and serious (look it up under RUBIN, Robert...

...Your next worthy but dull book should go to W.W...

...You will Nexis-search for a former Secretary of Commerce, who spends his 3-hour workdays arguing for a free-trade accord between the United States and the European Union...

...You'll be in the public speaking business at full bore at this point...

...But how do you establish yourself as one of the intellectual giants of the age...

...Age 40: All the drudgery is paying off, for now you are one of the more senior staffers on the National Security Council in the Friedman administration...

...The job of managing editor at a policy journal falls into this category...

...All you had to do was write an eternal master-work such as The Wealth of Nations or Democracy in America...

...To separate yourself from all the other blue suits on TV, you will have to develop an audio-visual signature...

...You will sit on panels...

...Remember, you're on the entre nous circuit...

...It no longer helps to write for policy journals...

...I made many of the same points in my latest polisci term paper (copy enclosed...

...And never go anywhere for less than $8,000 a speech...

...When you pitch a piece to an op-ed editor, let him know that the publisher of his newspaper is really keen that the piece be published (this doesn't have to be strictly true...

...It is considered good form to mask your ambition under the guise of intellectual purity...

...Meanwhile, your fantasy life will be built around episodes in which you make devastating comebacks on Meet the Press...

...From now on everything that you "write" will actually be composed by somebody else...

...Also, since you are a Democrat, you must pay homage to the Market...

...In middle age, it was corporate chieftains who hosted you at their hunting lodges...

...By now you are so important you no longer need to be interesting...

...But that sort of thing won't even get you a booking on the Today show...

...You will also have a grounding in currency matters, which nobody else understands...

...But it's also time to write a book title for Knopf (you'll also have to put 450 pages of text behind it, but that scarcely matters...

...This will assure that you spend a good part of each year in $400-a-night Kempinski hotels in formerly communist lands...

...That is to say, do you have enough self-confidence so that after studying a magazine article on brain surgery for 20 minutes, you feel comfortable giving a lecture to a thousand brain surgeons on what's wrong with their profession...

...You could identify yourself with the Social Market, Cooperative Individualism, or Sustainable Development...

...There's only one real career path for an aspiring intellectual giant: adviser...

...And you have to start young...

...If you'd gone into law school, you'd still be sitting in lecture halls...

...Assure him that "this one will really move the debate...

...Your leisure time should be spent name-dropping...

...Choosing your signature is a decision fraught with peril...

...First, you will have to choose a field of expertise...

...Kissinger has the voice, Tom Wolfe has the white suit...

...Sure, you have a plan to save the world, but if people don't agree with you, you certainly aren't going to make a scene...

...While in office, plant rumors that you are being mentioned as a possible president of the World Trade Organization...

...But that is too boring...

...On your book tour, you must catch the eye of those who control corporate consulting contracts and industry-group speaking invitations...

...And what is your philosophy...

...Age 35: By now you will no longer be one of the people who sit in panel discussion audiences...

...You'll have NPR on your speed-dial and you'll call them every week or so just to let them know you are available...

...The crucial decisions begin with college graduation...

...Doesn't think he could get it through...

...No criticism can possibly dampen your high opinion of yourself...

...You can picture the cameramen laughing at your wit...

...You might collect your tossed off thoughts on the human condition in books with titles like Our Epoch...

...Perhaps you spent your 20th summer reading Proust, but they spent theirs sending express-mail packages: "Dear Mr...

...Nevertheless, you must appear because you need the practice...

...Your first wonkish book should be published by Basic Books...

...To convey the impression of this great learning, you will have to cite the Federalist Papers...

...Or you could simply take the words Liberation, Innovation, Advantage, Competitive and combine them in a random pair: Competitive Innovation or Liberating Advantage...

...Democrats get immense credit for this...

...You get to influence who gets invited and which invitee gets to fly first class on the way to the meetings...

...You drop your words down on people, as if you are always speaking from a tall lectern...

...You sometimes visit your office at the Hoover Institution, but most of the time you're traveling with Felix Rohatyn on business for Lazard Fr?res...

...you'll be on PBS, but not CBS...

...Whatever you stand for, it will be safely in the mainstream...

...There will have to be a lot of plane travel, your speeches will be even more boring...

...So there you sit as a research assistant in your rabbit warren at the Private Property Foundation, drafting contemptuous Issue Briefings- "Cowards in Congress: Senators Bow to Telecom Lobbyists, Threatening Real Reform...

...And there will be the usual mandarin games...

...And some fine afternoon, during a slow news cycle so your obits won't be overshadowed by other events, you will pass from this earth...

...But sitting around with the other young staffers, you'll be doing devastating impersonations of him, causing general hilarity...

...Nonetheless, content does matter a little...

...You should be soundbiting like crazy...

...You will be in a paradoxical and uncertain state...

...something...

...One is to adopt an oxymoron...

...Age 53: In order to make the difficult leap from Significant Player to Major Institution, you must at this stage in your life be always in the spotlight...

...Anyway, Newt agreed that there are these three branches and he assured me it was going to stay that way...

...They are studied by people who wear beards and crumpled suits...

...Otherwise, it is just a necessary way-station to the climactic stage in your life...

...That's Say's Law, 1990s style: The more people say, the more there is to be said...

...You will specialize in knowing something about everything...

...You never quite imagine the exact words you utter to cause this great reaction...

...He's not going to shut one of them...

...What will you write about...

...That way you get a useful story on the day of your leak, and then favorable mention ("one of the administration's brightest foreign policy seers") several months hence when the columnist repays the favor...

...If you are just graduating from college now, it is best to be vaguely associated with the Democrats...

...If you'd gone into journalism you'd still be on the police beat...

...Of course you have this self-confidence...

...There are two ways to pick your phrase...

...In fact, your writing career is at an end...

...The short answer is that it doesn't really matter, so long as you possess a manner that suggests easygoing messianism...

...After all the years of striving, flattering, maneuvering, and sweating, you have now reached that happiest state: smug complacency...

...But don't sound like a broken record...

...Therefore you must reflect your good qualities off some field of specialization, a market niche...

...From there, if you want to be the Defining Genius of your epoch, these are the career guideposts you will have to follow: Age 22: A year out of college you should be a research assistant at the Center for Strategic and International Studies...

...But the wonderful thing about the think-tank world is that it requires absolutely no qualifications...

...Find something new...

...Making fun of your boss is so funny because it is the careerist's form of blasphemy...

...Work out a ratio for your highbrow references and rigorously stick to it: For every five times you refer to the Federalist Papers, make three references to Tocqueville, three to Clausewitz, one to Plato's Cave, two to Santayana and four to Sam Rayburn...

...But don't quotemonger about domestic or political issues...

...You will namedrop so much that you will find yourself dropping the names of other people's friends as if they were your own...

...The subject isn't that important...

...Nonetheless, turn down the column offer...

...Even Warren Christopher has the funny shirt collars...

...Wonk supply creates wonk demand...

...This will not be difficult, as the advice industry is expanding rapidly...

...The poor are always with us, so there is some reward in being a welfare expert...

...Stop by a conference on exchange rates at the Council on Foreign Relations and you are in the company of trim executives with trans-Atlantic accents, their skin aglow from a diet of subtle sauces and individually tailored exercise regimens...

...Obviously, your title will predict The End of...

...You know Newt's a real early riser...

...By now you should be appearing constantly on television, in the company of Lee Hamilton or Sam Nunn if at all possible...

...If you low-ball, the other big talkers will be mad...

...Are you a liberal, a conservative...

...Get yourself attached to some think tank, council, or foundation...

...If you are too far right the left-wingers will sink them...

...These days you have to have a multi-media marketing strategy...

...That means you never travel alone, but you only appear alone when you go on Nightline...

...You are no longer a mere individual...

...The federal budget comes around every year, so a budget expert is always in some demand...

...And then at retirement your blockbuster memoir should go to HarperCollins...

...If you are too far left, the right-wingers will sink your future nominations...

...The prestigious Bigthink book at the peak of your career should go to Knopf...

...The implied subject of all your pieces will be your own brilliance and good taste...

...It is the press contacts made while in government that will serve you well when you return to the private-sector advice industry...

...Age 27: You should have changed jobs six times by now, up the greasy poll of the think-tank world...

...Either way, your catch phrase should be vague, uplifting, businesslike, and forward-looking...

...Calls at all hours...

...At Aspen, you will coordinate the Institute's seminar series...

...You should act as if the First Amendment was written so that you can mention your friendship with George Soros as frequently as possible...

...The key word at this time of your life is "unsustainable...

...and to deliver pithy one-liners to CNN's Lou Dobbs on his nightly show Moneyline...

...And each new person who enters the business is another person who sponsors panel discussions and issues retreats, thus creating more engagements for all the other policy johnnies...

...Koppel, That was a brilliant show on the collapse of American foreign policy...

...You're going for prestige...

...History, politics, inequality, racism-all these have been taken...

...Other people think that a think-tank job is preparation for a White House post, but you know that a White House post is in fact preparation for your next think-tank job...

...You'll want to begin each piece by quoting Yogi Berra's line, "It's deja vu all over again...

...Ask yourself if you have what it takes to be a columnist...

...After a brief gig as an assistant editor at Foreign Policy magazine, you will be offered the job of program coordinator for the Aspen Institute...

...But the social issues are at the low end of prestige scale...

...As you are riding on the cigarette boats of your friends, you might note that when you get right down to it, no creed makes any sense unless it is based on faith in God...

...Television is an attention medium rather than a persuasion medium, so your purpose is to merely remind people that you exist, and to exude a positive image...

...The world is full of people who want to be the next Henry Kissinger, and the competition is fierce...

...Robert Novak already has the vest...

...Your kid's scholarship at Princeton may fall through later in life, in which case you'll have to land a job as vice president at Goldman Sachs-one of those jobs where the bank pays you to appear at Davos conferences on panels entitled "Are the Bretton Woods Twins Obsolete...

...No shouting over others to be heard...

...Moussed-back hair is too reminiscent of Richard Darman...

...Choose carefully...

...The other aspiring sages will go with the dominant Republicans, and that means that there will be more crowding on the right-wing side for the plum jobs in the years 2020-2040...