George Shultz, wimp.

• Author: Goolrick, Robert

George Shultz, Wimp

Meet George Shultz, man of integrity. "I believe the real heroes are people who speak up to their president, make their views known, are willing to take great personal risk in confronting their president,' said Senator Warren Rudman, vice chairman of the Senate Iran-contra committee. "You are such a hero, Mr. Secretary.' Rep. Jack Brooks praised Shultz for "integrity and honesty that has been sorely lacking in our other witnesses.' Shultz agreed with the assessment, arguing that he was forcefully fighting to make his views known.

You might be confusing him with the George Shultz who, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, "wrote himself out of the Iran operation' after his position didn't prevail. Or the one the Tower Commission said "specifically requested to be informed only as necessary to perform his job.' Or the one who failed to say a word when his assistant secretary, Elliott Abrams, misled Congress about State Department solicitation of contra money from third countries.

Yes, Shultz is a bit of an enigma. He occasionally has taken strong, even courageous, stands. When he was secretary of the treasury under Nixon he tried to shield the IRS from White House pressure. But more often he has exhibited a somewhat warped sense of when to hold up and when to fold up.

For example, although Shultz did not resign over the arms-for-hostages policy, he threatened to quit over relatively minor issues: the administration's lie detector policy, the president's sending Robert McFarlane on a mission without Shultz's knowledge, and his being denied the use of a plane.

In fact, Shultz has a history of crying resignation at the oddest times. In the 1960s, when he was dean of the University of Chicago Business School, Shultz barred antiwar protesters from using loudspeakers during a rally. When the president of the university overruled him, Shultz did the only honorable thing--he threatened resignation, until officials begged him to stay.

If there remains any doubt that Shultz holds an inverted view of when to do the "honorable' thing, there is one more example from the past: the notorious "ITT affair' when Shultz served as director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Nixon administration in 1971. Richard McLaren, the Justice Department's antitrust chief, was pressing antitrust cases against several conglomerates, most notably International Telephone and Telegraph. The company frenetically lobbied the Nixon...