By George, Reagan is getting it right at last

Press, 14 December 1982, Page 25

By George, Reagan is getting it right at last

ROBERT CHESSHYRE,

in Washington,

with a profile on the American Secretary of State, George Shultz.

When George Shultz. President Reagan s second Secretary of State, came aboard the’ Administration in July, the ship of state, storm tossed and rudderless, found itself with a level-headed and competent pilot for the first time in 18 months. And. as befits a man who has had thrust upon him the responsibility for getting the world's most powerful nation back on an even keel. Shultz exudes a monumental calm and competence. George Pratt Shultz, who is now in Europe on a twoweek visit, is a large man with fair, receding hair, bright blue eyes, and a conservative style of dress, who seeks consensus and speaks softly. His authority is manifest in his bearing — he could be a bishop in a business suit: or. what he so recently was. a leader of a giant corporation. His selfevident assurance hides nothing: what you see is what you get. What most Americans see. they like. Shultz is so universally admired at home that it is hard to imagine why he has not been entrusted with the running of America these past 10 years. A catalogue of his virtues pours forth from friends and colleagues. In his first five months in office he has: • Masterminded Reagan’s Middle East package ("the first, no the only, piece of professional foreign policy making of this Administration." said a former State. Department official): • Got the United States off the Soviet pipeline sanctions hook (the European visit is largely to mend fences after that debacle); • Reduced the decibel level of the Government's antiSoviet rhetoric; • Shifted Latin American policy away from obsession with 'military victory over Soviet surrogates towards serious consideration of the region's economic ills. In spare moments — Shultz works at his desk from 7 a.m. to 7.30 p.m.. taking ? couple of hours out daily to think about issues - he has begun sitting in on domestic economic policy discussions. He soaks up responsibility like a sponge. In an Administration of mainly lightweights and ideologues, he is a massively reassuring figure. In part, the unstinting praise derives from the fact that Shultz succeeded Alexander Haig, whose mercurial temperament and vaunting ambitions made him anything but a calm influence, and who is now suspected of having been plotting a 1984 run on the White House backed by Jewish American money. One Administration official said: "Shultz after Haig is like having a constantly burning 100 watt bulb

after a flickering fireflv." But what few Europeans remember is that Shultz has done it all before. He was the longest serving Cabinet officer in the Nixon Administration. and the first man to fill three Cabinet posts in one Administration - Labour. Director of the Office of Management and Budget (0.M.8.). and the Treasury. By the time he quit in 1974. exhausted after five years and a half, he was certainly the third most powerful person in the country. after Nixon himself and Henry Kissinger. Everything that Kissinger did not nail down. Shultz got his hands on. never fully relinquishing responsibility for one job when he moved on to the next. Colleagues remember the quiet way Shultz gradually assumed power, biding his time while others preened themselves. Soon Nixon realised the value of a man who seldom tried to sell a line but arrived at a clear-headed analysis of what was important and what was not. There came a point in most meetings when Nixon would turn to Shultz and say: “Well, what do you think George?" Not that Shultz always won: the main criticism of him from that period is that he soldiered blindly on after his policies had been overruled. Loyalty, which he has in abundance, is a two-edged quality. He is a Friedmannite. believing intensely in a free market, so when Nixon im-posed-a statutory prices and incomes policy over his head, many thought Shultz was finished. But, sensing imminent defeat. Shultz had been the only Cabinet officer to prepare a plan to make the controls work. Once again he was indispensable. "Leave it to George" has now become Reagan’s cry. as it was Nixon’s. Only now, with the added authority of

both years and his position as the'chief Cabinet member. Shultz is far less likely to be gainsaid.

He is a remarkable example of that large American breed of academics and business people who step in and out of government like other people change suits. He is a Republican but served both Kennedy and Johnson, beginning his forays to Washington as an economic adviser to Einsenhower. He was born into an affluent East Coast family — his father ran a training school for young stockbrokers — attended a private school, and graduated with honours in economics from Princeton in the middle of the Second World War. He joined the Marines, rapidly rose to major, and returned for post-graduate study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he later, became ’ a teacher inlabour relations. This was his strong suit for the next 20 years, and developed his consensus instinct for problem solving. He married a nurse. Helena O'Brien ("Obie"). whom he met in Hawaii during the war, and they had five children, all of whom are now grown up. Obie looks and is the Ilausfrau dumpy and bespectacled; on public display she wears an expression both of slight bewilderment to find herself where she is -- shoulder to shoulder with the world's leaders — and of immense pride in • her husband. She has said: "My most important role was to take care of my husband — keep him healthy and unworried by all the little details that are happening at home." Schultz was a good sportsman: basketball and American football at college, and later tennis and golf. He will be 62 while in Europe, but still plays golf well, scoring in the ’mid-80s. His main social pleasure has always been in his family, and in quiet fireside evenings at home. He entertains modestly, grilling a steak on a barbecue himself rather than calling in the caterers who do much business among the mighty of Washington. He is a man of good, rather than quick, humour, and not many jokes are attributed to him. He does not read newspapers, fraternise with favourite journalists, or watch TV news, and is impervious to what is written about him. In one sense he is largely apolitical, though he does have some deeply held convictions, including a hatred of racial prejudice. The only

stories told about him losing his temper during the Nixon years concerned such prejudice. When, as 0.M.8. director, he was told that there were no suitably qualified blacks to be found for his staff, he snapped back: "I’m sick of hearing that: let’s just do it." In another sense he is a consummate politician, adept at working the Washington system, and hiding his political talents largely by denying he’has ,any. Unlike Haig, he knows well that achievement in the capital is more likely to come from cooperation than confrontation. His economic bel.efs were largely formed during a 12year period in the free market atmosphere of the University of Chicago, which he quit in 1969 to join Nixon's Administration. He draws not only his ideas but his close aides from that period, including the new Deputy Secretary of State, Kenneth Dam. another economist, who was also his deputy at 0.M.8. a decade ago. Which, brings one to the central weakness in the Shultz State Department. Neither he nor his immediate deputies are strong on the crucial area of United States Soviet relations, politicalmilitary affairs, and arms control, in which the powerful voice of the Pentagon and

its hawkish Defence Secretary. Caspar Weinberger, have prevailed so far. Shultz has made a quick study but the subject is not in his bones. Decisions tend to be fed into the system from the middle ranks by committed anti-Soviet ideologues and if, for example, the United States is to be spared the dubious benefits and massive costs of the MX missile system, other voices have got to make themselves heard pretty rapidly. (William Clark, the National Security Adviser, is now widely regarded as a nonentity — "living proof." as one columnist put it the other day,

"that still waters can run shallow.”) For the past eight years Shultz had been a senior executive with the giant Bechtel construction and engineering company and his salary when he went to the State Department dropped from a reputed $BOO,OOO to $69,350. But the Bechtel system of giving executive shares, which are bough} back from them on retirement, has probably made Shultz a millionaire. It was through Bechtel that Shultz became familiar with leaders of several moderate Arab countries, a crucial influence in the reshaping of American policy away from Haig's obsessive pro-Israeli instincts. There are those who suspect that Shultz is in the end too bland to give positive international leadership. He will always, in any case, work through his President, although some would like it to be the other way round. One very senior economist, who was in the Nixon White House, said: "I think he ought to be President. You can imagine circumstances in which Mr Reagan would say. Tm tired of this job, but I'll lay my hands on you. and go out and campaign for you.’ ” He paused and added: “But that’s just my fantasy."