For three decades and more, James A Baker III was the face of American power. The tall Texan with the impassive stare ranks as the only person to have served as White House chief of staff, treasury secretary and secretary of state. In the Reagan and Bush Snr administrations, Baker enjoyed the unofficial title of “co-president”, a ruthless political operator who deployed his dealmaking skills to advance US interests while working with allies to help bring a peaceful end to the cold war.
Baker combined a hunter’s instinct for vulnerability with an acute sense of political timing. He knew when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em, as the Texans say about gambling. Baker understood that access to information and the president was the key to the exercise of power, and he was a master of the tactical leak, invariably accompanied by plausible deniability.
As Peter Baker (no relation) and Susan Glasser write in their enthralling biography, The Man Who Ran Washington, Baker’s record as a negotiator, implementer and enforcer is unsurpassed, and looks even more impressive in the current atmosphere of gridlock and hyper-partisanship.