Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,582

This is the grave of George Shultz.

Born in 1920 in New York City, Shultz grew up pretty wealthy and went to fancy schools before heading to Princeton, where he was an economics major. He graduated in 1942 and joined the Marines. He was an artillery officer in World War II and became a captain by the end of the war. He stayed in all three years before being discharged. He went to MIT for graduate school and earned a PhD in Industrial Economics in 1949. MIT hired him to stay on as an assistant professor. Mostly he remained in the academy for the next 20 years, later at the University of Chicago.

Shultz was always a Republican, though a pretty mainstream one. He took a year off from MIT to be on Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisors in 1955. But after he left for Chicago in 1957, he became to shift to the right. In short, he became influenced by the vile Milton Friedman and the rest of that crew. He was dean of the Graduate School of Business at Chicago from 1962 to 1968. By the time Richard Nixon became president in 1969, Shultz was among the leading far right economics professors in the country and he was happy to push his evolving ideas of the free market on the nation and the world. He would spend the rest of his career and very long life doing so, though he was also more tempered than the more ideological variety.

Nixon named Shultz Secretary of Labor in 1969. He was a bit overwhelmed in the job, to be honest. The big issue of this time was the rise of the militant postal workers in New York who engaged in an illegal public sector worker strike that paralyzed the nation. Schultz and Nixon attempted to get the National Guard to deliver the mail, but it was a disaster, the union blew the Nixon administration out of the water, and the government completely caved. This was a big victory for American unions and led to a decade of public sector militancy. Shultz was pretty disgusted, but this was really bigger than him. He also imposed the Philadelphia Plan, which was Nixon’s devious plan to impose racial quotas on government contracts in construction unions, all while blaming the Democrats for doing so and thus trying to pull union members toward the Republican Party. Incidentally though, Nixon wanted Daniel Patrick Moynihan for the job and George Meany basically told Nixon he was going to be in a world of hurt if he did that. He suggested a more reasonable Schultz. And while Shultz was a Friedmanite, his whole career would be defined as “less crazy than other possible Republican appointments.”

Shultz only stayed in the job for a year and a half. Unquestionably competent, Nixon named him the first head of the Office of Management and Budget in mid-1970. Then he moved Shultz to be Secretary of the Treasury in 1972. He had opposed Nixon’s New Economic Policy, at least privately, but as Treasury Secretary had to follow it. So he was in charge when the government lifted price controls, which led to spiraling inflation, and then Nixon reestablishing the controls. He also supported the move off the Gold Standard.

Shultz, a true political survivor, bailed on Nixon before the president had to resign and remained completely clean from Watergate. Like George Bush, he knew how to keep his hands just clean enough. He became president of Bechtel, that lovely company, in 1974. As such, he seriously increased the country’s contracts with the Saudis and nothing bad ever came of that again.

In 1982, Reagan realized his selection of Al Haig as Secretary of State was. maaaayyyyybe a bit problematic. So when Haig was forced out, the far more reasonable Shultz was named in his stead. He would remain for the rest of the Reagan administration and honestly it’s hard to criticize him too much, at least when compared to the other awful people in that administration. He once again knew how to keep his hands clean. Although he thought the Sandinistas horrible, he also wanted nothing to do with the schemes that became the Iran-Contra Affair and so he was never seriously implicated in this, despite being nominally in charge of American foreign policy.

Rather than nefarious and illegal schemes, Schultz focused on fixing the relationships with Europe that Haig had tried to blow up. For example, after the imposition of martial law in Poland, the administration placed sanctions on the Soviets. That included on a gas pipeline from West Germany east and do you think our allies in Bonn were consulted about this? No they were not. So they were angry at Washington. Schultz went in and fixed it, smoothing things over and allowing the West Germans to use their pipeline again.

Much to his credit, Shultz also encouraged Reagan to deal with Mikhail Gorbachev in a straight forward way. A lot of Reagan’s advisors opposed this. They could not imagine a communist being anything but an evil dirty trickster seeking to destroy America. So farther right people in the administration were not happy with Schultz at all. And as much as I loathe Reagan, I do have to give him credit here. He listened to Schultz and not Haig or those types. Shultz specifically suggested that Reagan open dialogue with Gorbachev and this began to lay the groundwork for the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, probably the most important arms control treaty since SALT and arguably since above ground testing was banned in the early 60s. He continued to impress upon Reagan the need to engage and it was a great foreign policy success.

Shultz left public life after Reagan left office. He became a key senior figure in the Republican Party. His libertarian streak came out more, opposing the War on Drugs for example. Unfortunately, he also was a key advisor to George W. Bush in his campaign and the early part of his presidency. Some have called Shultz the father of the Bush Doctrine and that ain’t good! On the other hand, he opposed the continuation of the embargo on Cuba and kept working on nuclear arms control. He also thought climate change was a key foreign policy issue and urged policymakers to work hard on it. He played a public role in encouraging the British not to leave the EU, but no one over there cared what an old American had to say. After all, there are some Africans down the block.

At the very end of his life, Shultz became a sucker for the modern financial schemes, specifically the Theranos scheme. He joined the company’s board in 2011 and recruited other big time elites such as Henry Kissinger to be supportive as well. Shultz’s grandson was in the company and was the whistleblower on Elizabeth Holmes’ lies. Shultz was not happy with his grandson. In fact, George had his grandson over to the house, surrounded him unexpectedly with Theranos attorneys, and pressured him to sign a document repudiating everything he had said, which he would not. But ouch, that’s bad. Later George came around and said his grandson was right and he had been wrong. Maybe he felt that way, maybe he was saving face.

Shultz died in 2021. He was 100 years old.

George Shultz is buried in Dawes Cemetery, Cummington, Massachusetts. A nice spot in the Berkshires, next to his first wife, who had died long before.

If you would like this series to visit other people who were Secretary of State, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Cyrus Vance is in Arlington and so is Henry Kissinger. Oh that’s right–Kissinger is dead!!!!! Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.