Leaving the White House a Winner

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr

He is, at once, the perfect Southern gentleman and the easygoing good ole boy. Trim, handsome and carefully dressed, he can exude the effortless charm of a man comfortable with wealth and power even as he chews a wad of Red Man tobacco, spitting the juice into a paper cup. A well-educated scion of a prominent line of Houston attorneys, he enjoys fishing with his buddies in the waters of Matagorda Bay and hunting wild turkey on his land near San Antonio. He is a managerial mastermind who relaxes by watching pro football games and listening to Tammy Wynette records.

Above all, James Addison Baker III is a consummate political pro. When President Reagan announced last week that he was nominating Baker as Secretary of the Treasury, Washington insiders applauded the move despite his relative lack of experience in economic and monetary matters. In his four years as White House chief of staff, Baker was a quick study who until the last few months thrived on the competitiveness and artistry of high-level politics.

Baker, 54, has been the leader of the Administration's pragmatists, describing himself as a conservative but following no strict political ideology. An outsider on the Reagan team in 1980, he overcame White House infighting, criticism from the far right, which considered him too moderate, and suspicion of involvement in the Debategate scandal to emerge as the President's most valuable player. He owes his success largely to an uncommon skill at forging coalitions across ideological lines. His finesse in dealing with politicians is matched by his rapport with much of the Washington press corps. In an Administration wary of journalists, Baker has cultivated reporters and quietly rallied public opinion behind the President's policies.

| Almost from the start, Baker and his team of legislative strategists have come through for Reagan at crucial moments. In 1981 Baker played a leading role in persuading Congress to pass the President's controversial budget and tax acts. That same year he helped win support for the sale of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. He was instrumental in grinding out a compromise on Social Security cuts with congressional Democrats. But the silver-haired Texan outdid himself last year when he managed to oversee the day-to-day operations of the White House while simultaneously helping run the Reagan re-election campaign. Baker cites the "49-state win for the President" as his proudest accomplishment. "I've never denied that I like the game," Baker told TIME last week. "I've won and I've lost. Winning is better."

Oddly enough, Baker was raised to believe that politics is a morally repugnant business. The family law firm, Baker & Botts, which his great- grandfather joined in 1872, was the largest, most prestigious in Houston. Like his father, Baker was educated at the Hill School in Pennsylvania and Princeton, then earned a law degree at the University of Texas, Austin. Because of antinepotism rules at Baker & Botts, he joined Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones to practice corporate law in 1957. Baker, like most Houston aristocrats of that era, was a conservative Democrat. While his father and grandfather had denigrated politics as a dishonorable profession, Baker was simply uninterested; he has described himself as having been a "completely apolitical" young attorney.

The political bug bit Baker in 1970 when a country-club friend named George Bush, then a Republican Congressman, asked him to work on his Senate campaign. Grieving over the death of his first wife that year, Baker was eager to try something new, so he accepted Bush's offer to run the Harris County campaign. Bush lost, but Baker proved to be a talented tactician, delivering 61% of the votes cast in the county, which includes Houston. Baker would say later that the campaign made him "absolutely, totally, pure Republican." He went on to work on President Nixon's re-election campaign, served briefly as Under Secretary of Commerce in the Ford Administration and in 1976 helped Ford defeat Reagan for the Republican nomination. As Ford's campaign chairman in the late stages of the race, Baker waged an aggressive fight in a losing effort against Jimmy Carter, impressing the Republican Establishment with his energy, acumen and cool efficiency.

In 1980 Baker again opposed Reagan, this time as head of Bush's presidential campaign. Always the pragmatist, Baker had Bush pull out of the race just before the California primary to keep alive a shot at the vice-presidential spot. When Bush got the call, Baker became a key strategist for the Reagan campaign. On the recommendations of trusted advisers, Reagan chose the newcomer as his White House chief of staff.

Baker's detractors say he fails to bone up on complex issues, relying on his staff to sweat the details. He has been called overcautious, too reluctant to challenge Reagan's views on issues like defense spending. And besides taking heat from archconservatives outside the White House who questioned his loyalty, Baker often tangled with such longtime Reaganauts as Edwin Meese and William Clark. "My job is not to go into the Oval Office and advocate a view because I happen to believe it strongly," said Baker last year. "My job is to let the President know what I think is best politically."

Baker the competitor is happy to be leaving the White House a winner. He insists the pressures of the office did not get to him, but associates say he was wounded by Debategate. The case, investigated by a congressional subcommittee and the Justice Department, concerned briefing papers purloined from Jimmy Carter's staff in 1980 and used by the Reagan team to prepare their candidate for the crucial presidential debate. While William Casey, then Reagan's campaign manager, claimed he did not remember any such papers, Baker maintained he had received the documents from Casey. Investigators found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, but Baker had been put in the position of having to defend his integrity. For a member of a proud, forthright clan, this was excruciating ignominy.

So far, Baker has been confronted by only one critic of his move to the Treasury. After the announcement, he talked on the phone with Mary Bonner Baker, his seven-year-old daughter by his second wife. "Daddy, I don't want you to do this!" said the articulate, self-confident youngster. "You'll be leaving the White House," she protested, "and I won't get to see the President so much."

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington