Why do I expend so many words on the two Georges, Marshall and Shultz? Because quiet giants like them no longer exist, either on the American scene or the world stage. “If I could choose one American to whom I would entrust the nation’s fate in a crisis, it would be George Shultz,” wrote Henry Kissinger, one of his far more famous predecessors. Secretaries of state do that a lot, and Shultz, with his Sphinx-like expression, was perfectly suited for it. We both sat through the endless inauguration of some forgotten Central American president back in the 1980s - him motionless on the podium, me squirming in the audience while covering stories in the country. That, in turn, laid the groundwork for the end of the Cold War - and of the Soviet empire itself. He guided Reagan, despite opposition from administration hawks, to forge a working relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. As secretary of state, he negotiated the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with the Soviet Union, the only pact that actually reduced the nuclear arsenals of both superpowers. “The best leaders trust their followers with the truth, and you know what happens as a result? Their followers trust them back.”Īnd Shultz did some big, hard things. With that bond, they can do big, hard things together, changing the world for the better.” The best leaders trust their followers with the truth, and you know what happens as a result? Their followers trust them back. Trust is fundamental, reciprocal and, ideally, pervasive. In an essay for Time Magazine as he approached his 100th birthday, he wrote: “‘In God we trust.’ Yes, and when we are at our best, we also trust in each other. “Trust is the coin of the realm,” Shultz often said. “The minute in this government that I am not trusted is the day that I leave,” Shultz stated publicly. He also refused to roll over when Reagan ordered lie-detector tests for government officials as a way to plug leaks. Later, as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state for more than six years, Shultz served effectively while avoiding becoming entangled in the sordid Iran-Contra scandal, which nearly brought down that administration. At the time, Nixon furiously told an aide: “What does that candy ass think we sent him over there for?” “It was an improper use of the IRS, and I wouldn’t do it,” Shultz later said. But he didn’t budge when asked to cross certain ethical lines.Īccording to journalist Lou Cannon, Shultz twice refused as treasury secretary to allow Nixon to use the IRS to audit political enemies or to stop an audit of Nixon’s own tax returns. There’s a reason for that: Shultz was a good soldier, up to a point. He managed to keep his reputation intact as the administration imploded during the Watergate scandal. After the war, he earned a Ph.D in economics at MIT, held various academic posts and rose through Republican ranks, eventually becoming Richard Nixon’s labor secretary, treasury secretary and director of management and budget.īoring, right? Except Shultz wasn’t done when Nixon fell. Shultz wasn’t quite as distinguished as Marshall, but in his quiet way, he came close.Ī Princeton man (he had the school’s tiger mascot tattooed on one of his buttocks), Shultz served as a Marine Corps captain and artillery officer in World War II. In 1953, Marshall received the Nobel Peace Prize - the only professional soldier so honored. He helped develop NATO, which defended Western European democracy. After the war, he served as secretary of state while the Marshall Plan unfolded, as secretary of defense after the Korean War broke out. Churchill himself said Marshall, as American military chief of staff and later general of the Army, was “the true organizer of victory.”Ī supremely gifted technocrat, Marshall turned the United States from a mostly demobilized, isolationist bystander in the 1930s into a fearsome war machine that helped crush the Nazis and the Japanese. No other single man - not Franklin Roosevelt, not Dwight Eisenhower, not Winston Churchill - did more to lead the Allies to victory in that conflict after a woefully unprepared beginning. It helped feed, clothe and rebuild Europe while reconstructing its ravaged economies after World War II. Marshall designed the European Recovery Plan, known as the Marshall Plan in honor of its architect.
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