"IRESENT THAT," said the secretary of state. He spoke firmly. He had been accused in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1986 of "lack of moral backbone" on economic sanctions against South Africa. "I hate to hear a senator of the United States calling for violence," he told his young haranguer. "You may kick me around as secretary of state, but I'm a taxpayer." Members of the committee laughed out loud-with him, and against their fellow senator. George Shultz might be in the dock, but for all his free-market rigour, forged in the Chicago School, he was too experienced and too reasonable to be hectored by Joe Biden of Delaware. As they argued (not for the last ti me), he was serving in his fourth cabinet post under his second Republican president. Even after his retirement every president, treasury secretary and secretary of state, Republican or Democrat, sought his counsel. In 2021 Mr Biden wished he could do the same.
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