| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. The death of American statesman George P. Shultz at 100, just before the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump … well, it's hard to not see it as a symbol for everything wrong with today's Republican Party.
Shultz was a good example of how a reasonably healthy party operates. Parties need governing professionals — people who actually know how to make things work after an election is won. And healthy parties look out for and promote talented people. Shultz worked for Dwight Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers. He was Richard Nixon's labor secretary, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and treasury secretary. Then from 1982 on, he was Ronald Reagan's secretary of state.
By all accounts, he acquitted himself well in each of these jobs. Most notably, he played an important role in recognizing that Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union was very different from what had come before, and that real progress was possible on issues such as arms reduction. He refused to help Nixon's corrupt plans during Watergate, while the schemers within the Reagan administration worked behind his back during the Iran-Contra affair. That's not to say that none of his policy decisions over the years were without controversy. But he served the nation well, and the Republican Party was better off with him as one of its leaders.
It's not the 1950s. Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan (and Democrats of the time as well) recruited from a very narrow slice of the population. Shultz, who went from a Connecticut prep school to Princeton, then rose through the meritocracy to earn a Ph.D. before entering government service, traveled paths that were closed off to most Americans. Joe Biden's administration, like Barack Obama's before it, shows how a reasonably healthy party can be open to many previously excluded sources of governing professionals. Of course, we won't know for some time which of Biden's picks are Shultz-like successes and which are failures. But we do know that Democrats (like Republicans in the 1950s through the 1980s) keep replenishing their talent pool.
And then there's the Trump Republicans. It's hard to identify many veterans of that administration who appear ready to staff the next Republican presidency, let alone be a future George Shultz. And after George W. Bush made progress in diversifying the party's governing professionals, Trump walked it back several steps. All this matters: Bill Clinton's presidency, which came after a long stretch of mostly Republican administrations, didn't have a lot of executive-branch experience to rely on — which helped to produce a wasted honeymoon.
Again, experience doesn't necessarily produce success, but inexperience is a serious obstacle to any administration. And cultivating people willing to work with Trump doesn't seem like a promising way to build a party's governing capacity. So the current Republican Party might want to reflect a bit on George Shultz, a hero of the republic, and think about how to produce more like him.
1. Seth Masket on bipartisanship, direct benefits and electoral incentives.
2. Josh Putnam on the New Hampshire primary.
3. Ray La Raja on transparency in government.
4. Bethany Albertson and Julia Azari talk about what's going on within the Republican Party.
5. Matthew Green at the Monkey Cage on the attempt to purge Liz Cheney.
6. John M. Carey on Trump and constitutional design.
7. And Stanley Plotkin, Norman Baylor and Keona Jeane Wynne propose a one-time National Vaccine Day. Nice idea! Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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