From the archive, 18 February 1987: The rise of Arianna Huffington

Mrs Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington yesterday let slip what her most fervent admirers must have suspected all along. The legendary social ambition of the former president of the Cambridge Union may no longer be satisfied until she has captured an even more important presidency - the one which would entitle her to hold parties at the White House.

Aficionadoes of the Stassinopoulos phenomenon will be disappointed to discover that the author of Callas and mother-to-be is not eyeing the Presidency for herself.

It would be for her husband, a shy Texan oilman and opera buff, Michael Huffington, who has been appointed to the middle-ranking Pentagon post of deputy assistant secretary of defence for negotiations since marrying Arianna in a glitzy New York setting last April.

As a Greek-born Washingtonian, Mrs Huffington would be ineligible for the Presidency in any case, and has her long-awaited book of Picasso to finish. She must also establish herself as firmly into the power-conscious social scene in provincial Washington as she did in metropolitan London and New York.

She is making huge strides and yesterday earned the town’s nearest equivalent to a discreet mention in the court circular back in London - a full-page profile in the Style section of the Washington Post.

Among its many revelations was that Mrs Huffington, aged 36, now regards Washington as her favourite city, that her bedroom is the ‘nerve centre’ of her existence, and that her friends are speculating that her ambitions may now be leaning towards being an ambassador’s wife at the very least with First Lady not ruled out.

‘It’s impossible for me to answer that hypothetical question,’ she told the Post with commendable fatalism.

She was spotted sitting next to the Defence Secretary, Mr Caspar Weinberger, at a high-powered dinner last autumn - the seating-plan was arranged by her friend, Mary Jane Wick, wife of President Reagan’s information chief. None the less, Mrs Huffington laughs off any suggestion that she had a role in obtaining the Pentagon job for her husband. He is a long-time friend and supporter of the Vice-President, George Bush, has a Harvard MBA and is now ‘responsible for the formulation of policy regarding various arms control forums,’ the Pentagon confirmed yesterday.

But from a five-storey house which the couple have rented in fashionable Georgetown, she has enlarged a circle of powerful friends who already include Mrs Anne Getty and Selma ‘Lucky’ Roosevelt, the White House chief of protocol. A charity performance she is chairing was co-chaired last year by Mrs J. D. Rockefeller IV. She has won over Mr Richard Perle, the influential Assistant Secretary for Defence.

The Post profile prompted mixed opinions among observers of the social scene. The article dwelt at length on the influence upon Mrs Huffington of a teacher turned Californian guru, called John-Roger, who is credited with the credo, ‘use everything to your advantage.’

News of Mrs Huffington’s summer baby seeped into Liz Smith’s gossip column in the tabloid New York Daily News when the pregnancy still had 8 1/2 months to run.

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