George P. Shultz: A man of bipartisanship

I was nervous when I first met George Shultz in 2009. I was working at the United States Institute of Peace headquarters. Secretary Shultz had helped fund the building, and my boss, Ambassador Richard Solomon, had worked for Shultz and wanted me to meet him at the groundbreaking ceremony.

Aware that Shultz had been secretary of labor, secretary of the Treasury, secretary of State, first director of the Cabinet-level Office of Management and Budget, former president of the engineering colossus Bechtel and a scholar at Stanford, I thought he might be a bit intimidating.

Far from cold or intimidating, Shultz was unassuming, kind, gracious and warm. Elegantly dressed in his trademark blue stripped suit, he seemed more grandfatherly than scholarly. It was hard to believe that so gentle a man had been steely and tough-minded as Ronald Reagan’s second secretary of State, replacing Al Haig in the summer of 1982 and had negotiated with China over Taiwan, established troop withdrawals and new diplomatic dialogues in the Middle East and, perhaps most memorably, stood by Reagan’s side at Reykjavik when a major breakthrough seemed possible for the world’s two superpowers.

His death over the weekend marks the end of a 100-year life remarkable in its breadth and depth. Much will be said and written about Shultz in the days ahead. 

But most important, in my view, is that this was a Republican who advanced so many Democratic, bipartisan and nonpartisan solutions to global problems, and that he defies political labeling in this age of political partisanship.

George P. Shultz, who presided with a steady hand over the beginning of the end of the Cold War as President Reagan’s often-embattled secretary of State, served Republican presidents starting with Dwight D. Eisenhower, and yet his views spanned the political spectrum.

Consider his views on climate.

In “A Reagan Approach to Climate Change” – a March 2015 op-ed in the Washington Post – Shultz proposed that the United States take out an “insurance policy” against global warming by increasing government research and development and enacting a carbon tax, lest we get “mugged by reality” later on.

Not many people remember The Montreal Protocol, signed by Reagan in 1987, which enacted international controls on man-made compounds, such as chlorofluorocarbons, that created the ozone hole. Since its adoption, ozone depletion has ceased, and ozone holes over the poles have begun to recover. Shultz had a specific fix for the climate crisis, a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The tax would be collected on activities that produce greenhouse gases and returned to taxpayers as a dividend.

Shultz co-authored “The State Clean Energy Cookbook,” sponsored by Stanford’s left-leaning Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, and led the right-leaning Hoover Institution’s Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy. The collaboration aimed to address the red state/blue state divide and the partisan gridlock that has made passing federal environmental legislation nearly impossible. 

George Shultz was best known for his writings about nuclear weapons and disarmament, including a seminal 2007 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.” He co-wrote the piece with Democrats and Republicans who had served in the highest national security jobs.

Shultz wrote numerous reports and studies on how to address the world’s nuclear nightmare but always in a clear, calm, nuanced and insightful way.

We live in deeply polarized times, when a voice of reason is much needed. As recently as last year, Sec. Shultz bemoaned the loss of trust and confidence in America. In an essay published in the November issue of the Foreign Service Journal, a monthly publication by the association representing U.S. diplomats, Shultz called for a “rebuilding” of trust in the State Department and the federal government in general, as well as with allies and adversaries.

The world needs more voices of reason. Rest easy, Sec. Shultz. You have left us much work to do.

Tara D. Sonenshine is a former U.S. under-secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs.