DAY 14: America Held Hostage
James Baker
The Bush family janitor.
By David Plotz
Posted Friday, Nov. 17, 2000, at 9:30 a.m. PT
The Wise Men have arrived. They have
traveled by night from the west to save the
Son (one junior or the other), bearing gifts
of gold, frankincense, and chad. The Gore
campaign disinterred former Secretary of
State Warren Christopher and shipped him
cross-country to rescue the veep. George
W. Bush countered by dispatching a former
secretary of state of his own, James Baker.
Dubya already depends on dad's other
advisers to tell him what to think. So it's unsurprising he finally
called on Baker, the Bushie di tutti Bushies, for help. The Florida
rescue mission is redemption for the 70-year-old Baker. Barbara
Bush and George W. blamed Baker for running President Bush's
1992 campaign into the ground. (Barbara reportedly called
Baker "The Invisible Man" for his lackadaisical effort in the
closing weeks.) But now that the Bushes are desperate again,
Baker has been summoned from obscurity—advising merchant
banks, negotiating for the United Nations in Western Sahara—to
save them one more time.
Baker's parachute mission has prompted the expected
outpouring of gush. Gov. Bush tongue-bathed him for his
"impeccable credentials and integrity." The Baker-philic press
echoed the praise. Baker has responded with his usual
pomposity. He has gone before the nation to warn us that Gore's
vote challenges are embarrassing the United States abroad, that
the dragged-out election is a "danger to democracy," and that
Gore should bow out for "the good of the country."
The Bush campaign is counting on Baker's image as a statesman
to advance Dubya's claim to the presidency. Don't you dare call
Baker a mere politician. The Washington establishment considers
him the greatest of all Republican mandarins. A child of the
Texas aristocracy, he prepped in the East and graduated
Princeton, then returned to practice corporate law in Houston. In
1970, he signed up as Bush the Father's right-hand man, a job he
has held—on and off, often bitterly—ever since.
Baker fuses patrician chill with Texas saltiness: He's a
hyperefficient control freak dressed up in cowboy boots and
chaw. He rocketed through the political hierarchy from President
Ford's undersecretary of commerce to Reagan's chief of staff to
secretary of the treasury to Bush's secretary of state. He was
nicknamed the Velvet Hammer and gained a reputation for
skillful tactics and honest negotiation. With the smugness that
only the combination of Texas and the Ivy League can produce,
Baker settled for an aide's role because he knew he was better
than the pols he served.
But Baker's vaunted integrity is largely a euphemism for his real
gift: the ability to keep his hands clean. Part of this is PR. Baker
is a world-class flatterer of reporters. He cultivated the
journalists covering him and leaked copiously. He got fantastic
coverage—especially at the State Department—frequently at the
expense of his boss.
Baker also proved masterful at insulating himself from trouble. In
the 1980 campaign, Baker prepped Reagan for debates with a
briefing book lifted from the Carter campaign. But Baker bore
no responsibility for "Briefingate," laying the scandal off on
William Casey. As treasury secretary in the late '80s, Baker
didn't act against the emerging S & L crisis, leaving the mess for
his successor. When Bush chose Dan Quayle as his running mate
in 1988, campaign chairman Baker made sure to tell reporters
that he disagreed with Quayle's selection. Baker supervised
Bush's savage '88 campaign but allowed Lee Atwater to take
credit for it, thus ducking accountability for its nastiness. As
secretary of state, Baker rightly won credit for constructing the
Gulf War coalition, but he never shouldered any blame for the
shortsighted policy that encouraged Iraqi adventurousness in the
first place. (Baker allowed the American ambassador to take the
fall for U.S. friendliness toward Saddam Hussein.)
Despite Baker's statesman persona, he will probably be
remembered for being what he hates: a handler. He had a few
modest achievements at State and Treasury but never had any
vision for the jobs beyond his next tactical move. He lost his only
run for office—Texas attorney general in 1978—and abandoned
the idea of running for president in 1996 before the campaign
started.
Instead, Baker's legacy is as paramedic for dying campaigns. In
1976, he was recruited to resuscitate Ford's campaign and
managed to stave off Reagan's primary challenge and nearly
upset Jimmy Carter. In 1980, Baker salvaged Bush's career by
folding Bush's presidential campaign over the candidate's
objections. Bush's withdrawal allowed him to remain a viable
running mate for Reagan. In 1984, Baker orchestrated Reagan's
"morning in America" romp to re-election. Four years later, Bush
persuaded him to quit Treasury to rescue his flagging presidential
campaign. And in 1992, Bush dragged him away from State for
more campaign CPR.
It's hard not to suspect that, at some deep level, Baker remains
disappointed with himself. He hates his Mr. Fix-It reputation. He
reportedly wanted to vomit when Time put him on the cover as
Bush's "handler." He loathed traveling with Bush because he was
treated like "a goddamn butler." He called his campaign work for
Ford "demeaning."
Yet he can't seem to stay away. The Florida mess may give
Baker the satisfaction of knowing that the Bushes can't live
without him. But schlepping to Florida to clean up another Bush
mess surely makes him seethe. He wanted to be one of the
powers that be. Instead he's America's most famous janitor.
Related in Slate
Read all Slate's articles about the Florida election chaos here. In
an "Explainer" about whether George W. Bush could name his
Cabinet before Election Day, Emily Yoffe noted that Dubya's
father named Baker as secretary of state the morning after the
1988 election.
Related on the Web
Baker is honorary chairman of Rice University's James A. Baker
III Institute for Public Policy. One of Baker's current jobs is
senior counselor to the Carlyle Group, a merchant bank. It posts
a bio of him. He is also a partner in Baker Botts, the law firm
founded by his great-grandfather. This is the Treasury
Department's portrait of Baker. Here is the State Department
biography of fellow Florida wise man Warren Christopher,
Baker's successor at State.
Join The Fray What did you think of this article?
David Plotz is Slate's Washington bureau chief. You can
e-mail him at plotz@slate.com.
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