This week was David M. Abshire’s 80th Birthday.
Lynne Duke recently had a long article in the Washington Post on DMA, founder of CSIS, and the civility project he is running at the Center for the Study of the Presidency.
His footprint in Washington has been large for years, as has his reputation for getting people to do what he wanted, for “making you feel that he’s doing you a tremendous favor for giving you that opportunity,” his old friend, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, joked during a colloquium at the Dirksen Senate office building yesterday in Abshire’s honor. Abshire’s tact, Kissinger said, is “a truly artistic performance.”
DMA was president of CSIS when I arrived there fresh out of college and is someone that I’ve always admired.
Oh, and I am sorry that Jeremy Bratt and I used the autopen to sign your name to that memorandum announcing that the Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty was the “f*cking bomb!”
It was, though. And so are you.