Henry Kissinger is beginning to remind me of one of those perennial Latin American dictators – like Argentina’s Juan Peron returning from exile for an ill-fated third term, the former secretary of state seems to keep coming back, again and again, to cast his difficult legacy and influence over the U.S. foreign policy establishment. This year’s presidential election is no exception. Kissinger has been involved in the McCain campaign on an unprecedented level, offering an official endorsement and assuming a role on his team of foreign policy advisers. Then during VP candidate Sarah Palin’s on-the-job foreign policy training in New York last week, a good deal of emphasis from the media focused on her meeting with Kissinger – like a young jedi visiting the master yoda – to suggest that whatever shortcomings Palin may have in this area, she can always defer to the wisdom of this foreign policy overlord. Of course she later flubbed the details of what she learned from Kissinger during the CBS interview, but that’s beside the point. But perhaps most astonishing was the bitter argument over Kissinger’s position of talks without preconditions with rogue leaders between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama during Friday’s debate. It seems that both candidates have committed a colossal error in kowtowing to Kissinger, argues Christopher Hitchens, and even further, neither appear to understand his approach or remember what he was just recently saying about Russia.