Hillary Watch: Secretary Clinton Met Today with Former Secretary George Shultz
By SusanUnPC on January 31, 2009 at 1:15 AM in Current Affairs, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, State Department, State Department Press Briefings
Below you’ll see the video and full transcript of Secretary Clinton’s and Schultz’s remarks to the press today. But first it’s entertaining to reminisce a bit about just who George Shultz is, and what he’s done in government — after all, many of our younger readers may not know much about him since he was most prominent in the Nixon and Reagan administrations. I have heard more than one person say that he was one of our great Secretaries of State. Here’s a fascinating snippet from his Wikipedia bio:
On July 16, 1982, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve as the sixtieth U.S. secretary of state, replacing Alexander Haig, who had resigned. Considered by some to be a dove on foreign policy within the Reagan administration, Shultz frequently clashed with the more hawkish members of the administration. In particular, he was well known for outspoken opposition to the “arms for hostages” scandal that would eventually become the Iran Contra situation. In a 1983 testimony before the U.S. Congress, he said that the Sandinista government in Nicaragua was “a cancer in our own land mass”, that must be “cut out”. He was also opposed to any negotiation with the government of Daniel Ortega: “Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.” During the First Intifada (see Arab-Israeli conflict), Shultz “proposed … an international convention in April 1988 … on an interim autonomy agreement for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to be implemented as of October for a three-year period” [3]. However, this never materialized. …
While “Shultz has been called the father of the ‘Bush Doctrine’, because of his advocacy of preventive war,” he also came out for common sense on drugs and Cuba:
Shultz became the first prominent Republican to call for the legalization of recreational drugs. He went on to add his signature to an advertisement, published in The New York Times on June 8, 1998, entitled “We believe the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself.”
He also has spoken against the Cuban embargo, going as far as calling the US policy towards Cuba “insane”.
He’s definitely an interesting and highly influential man, who served in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations.
Remarks with Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz Before Their Meeting
SECRETARY CLINTON: We are delighted to have former Secretary Shultz visit the State Department today. Some of you who may have been around a while know that he was Secretary of State for seven years and had a leadership role, was instrumental in so many of the important events of those years. But nearer to home here, he also led the efforts to renovate and refurbish the State Department.
So much of what we enjoy today and the beauty of these rooms is really traced to his interest in making sure that the State Department reflected, you know, the historic significance that it has, in fact, by the way that it appears.
So I’m delighted to have him here. We’re going to spend some time talking. I’m going to ask him to just give me whatever advice and counsel he wishes to share. Do you want to say something, George?
SECRETARY SHULTZ: I like to come back and look around. I was the first Secretary of State since Thomas Jefferson who liked construction jobs. (Laughter.) And when I hear those tap, taps, it means something’s happening.
SECRETARY CLINTON: That’s right.
SECRETARY SHULTZ: So I enjoyed fixing this. But more, it always seemed to me when you have visitors coming here from all over the world, and we put our good foot forward, and the décor is all sort of colonial America, so it tells them we have a history.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Right.
SECRETARY SHULTZ: And up in the Adams Room, I think it is, is the Thomas Jefferson desk.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Right.
SECRETARY SHULTZ: I love to show it to people because he designed it, he built it, he wrote portions of the Declaration of Independence on it. So there is a Renaissance man that’s deep in our history, and it’s right here in the Department of State.
SECRETARY CLINTON: That’s right. Well, it’s an interesting juxtaposition, but yesterday, I greeted the latest class of the Foreign Service school applicants, the Foreign Service applicants. And they were here and they’re on their way to becoming the next generation of our diplomats. So the continuity is very much in not only the present, but to be, you know, valued and respected. So let’s go have a conversation.
SECRETARY SHULTZ: Okay.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you all very much. Thank you.
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