WITH THE MOSTEST

The very rich hours of Pamela Harriman.

- Margaret Talbot

They don’t make them like Pamela Harriman anymore. On balance, that’s probably a good thing. Not that there isn’t much to admire or, at least, marvel at in the life of the mid-century paramour turned Democratic Party power broker—her talent for keeping strategically chosen lovers as lifelong friends, her zest for reinventing herself, her unquenchable optimism about her party’s prospects, her capacity for leading a remarkably consequential public life without ever holding an actual public post, or even really a job, until she was seventy-three. But Harriman’s path to power—greased by aristocratic privilege, fuelled by sexual alliances, and, for both reasons, not exactly transparent—isn’t one you’d recommend to an ambitious woman today, either for her own sake or, not to sound too stuffy about it, for democracy’s.