NODDING OFF
The Kissinger style

FEB 6 1976

By John Stanton

COPIES OF SECRETARY OF State Henry Kissinger's speech were made available to the press Tuesday before he delivered the speech to a San Francisco audience of 2,000.

Reading through the speech, reporters underlined the comments they thought were the most newsworthy and those they expected would evoke a strong reaction from the crowd.

There were plenty of comments that were newsworthy— strong statements on detente and Angola—but none of them drew any kind of response from the audience.

It wasn't what Kissinger said. It was just the way he said it.

Kissinger may be an expert diplomat, but as an orator he is boring, boring, boring.

Perhaps it's his heavy German accent. Perhaps it is his scholarly approach (he was a professor at Harvard for many years). Probably it is a combination of both.

AS HE DRONED THROUGH THE 59-page speech (he benevolently omitted large sections of it), Kissinger often made a hard-hitting statement, then paused to await the applause which never came. The crowd sat there in silence, listening but not reacting.

Not once in his 35-minute speech was Kissinger interrupted by applause.

It was a different story during the question-and-answer period that he conducted after his speech, however. Here Kissinger was more relaxed, less formal and often witty. He was given several loud ovations in response to his answers.

Kissinger proved he was a diplomat with his answer to one question which drew groans of disapproval from the audience: "To what extent has the KGB (Russian secret police) infiltrated the United States Congress?"

"I may be courageous, but I am not reckless," Kissinger answered.

It is not unusual for a Cabinet officer to give a major address in such a boring delivery that its importance is lost on its audience.

SEVERAL YEARS AGO JOHN Mitchell, then the U.S. attorney general, delivered a major policy address before the Republican state convention in Los Angeles. About 2,000 party loyalists filled the Copacabana at the Wilshire Hotel to hear him.

Reporters reading his prepared speech before he delivered it found it full of tough talk which they were sure would have the partisan audience whooping and hollering. That is, those reporters who had never heard Mitchell speak before thought so.

Mitchell might as well have read from the Los Angeles telephone book. He was embarrassingly dull. His monotone delivery literally put some people to sleep.

AT ONE POINT ONE MAN OUT of the vast audience clapped, then stopped abruptly as the sound of his lone applause only increased the embarrassment Mitchell was suffering.

It didn't help when one irreverent reporter took his pen in hand, opened his notebook, and asked a little too loudly: "How do you spell 'tumultuous'?"