There's no need to be sexist in either direction. I was just listening to the 6-part Behind the Bastards podcast about Henry Kissinger, and basically their con

There's no need to be sexist in either direction. I was just listening to the 6-part Behind the Bastards podcast about Henry Kissinger, and basically their conclusion was that his greatest power was being the ultimate suck-up who could intellectually and artfully validate anybody, no matter how vile. He used it to manipulate presidents and have a place in the white houses of both parties, and also keep a slew of beautiful women and power-brokers on his arm. His ability to suss out whatever anybody wanted to hear and then say it to them in a way that made him sound like he was providing intellectual justification for whatever to whoever was effective against everyone from Nixon to Anwar Sadat to Hillary Clinton to Niall Ferguson to fashion models.