George Schultz, Secretary of State under President Reagan, passed away at age 100 this week. In one of his tributes the following story was related ...
Shultz was then, as best we recall, President Nixon’s budget director. He was in town on such business and called a press conference at the federal building, which was across the street from the [Wall Street] Journal’s news bureau. So we tucked a notebook in our pocket and went over at the appointed hour. There were an astonishing number of reporters present.
Nixon was by then in the heavy seas of Watergate, and various members of his administration were starting to decamp. At some point, a television reporter, with a camera crew, stands up and says to Shultz. “Mr. Secretary, a lot of people are starting to quit the administration; are you yourself going to leave, sir?” Something like that. To which Shultz replied: “Well, I am a Marine, and a Marine sticks to his post.”
The scrum of reporters was digesting this when the television guy, who had sat down, maneuvered himself back up into an upright position and said, “Well, sir. I’m a Marine, too, and when I was in the Marines, we were told, ‘A thinking Marine is a dead Marine.’” The reporters swiveled back in Shultz’s direction, where, without missing a beat, Shultz says: “I see why you survived.”