James Baker
James Addison Baker III[note 1] (born April 28, 1930)[1] is an American attorney, diplomat and statesman. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 10th White House Chief of Staff and 67th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan and the 61st U.S. Secretary of State before returning as the 16th White House Chief of Staff under President George H. W. Bush.
This article is about the politician. For other uses, see James Baker (disambiguation), James A. Baker (disambiguation), and James Addison Baker (disambiguation).
James Baker
Lawrence Eagleburger
John Tabor
Edward Vetter
Republican (since 1970)
Democratic (before 1970)
5
Rosebud Baker (granddaughter)
United States
1952–1954 (active)
1954–1958 (reserve)
Born in Houston, Baker attended the Hill School and Princeton University before serving in the United States Marine Corps. After graduating from the University of Texas School of Law, he pursued a legal career. He became a close friend of George H. W. Bush and worked for Bush's unsuccessful 1970 campaign for the United States Senate. After the campaign, he served in various positions for President Richard Nixon. In 1975, he was appointed Under Secretary of Commerce for Gerald Ford. He served until May 1976, ran Ford's 1976 presidential campaign, and unsuccessfully sought election as the Attorney General of Texas.
Baker ran Bush's unsuccessful campaign for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, but made a favorable impression on the Republican nominee, Ronald Reagan. Reagan appointed Baker as his White House Chief of Staff, and Baker remained in that position until 1985, when he became the Secretary of the Treasury. As Treasury Secretary, he arranged the Plaza Accord and the Baker Plan. He resigned as Treasury Secretary to manage Bush's successful 1988 campaign for president. After the election, Bush appointed Baker to the position of Secretary of State. As Secretary of State, he helped oversee U.S. foreign policy during the end of the Cold War and dissolution of the Soviet Union, as well as during the Gulf War. After the Gulf War, Baker served another stint as White House Chief of Staff from 1992 to 1993.
Baker remained active in business and public affairs after Bush's defeat in the 1992 presidential election. He served as a United Nations envoy to Western Sahara and as a consultant to Enron. During the Florida recount following the 2000 presidential election, he managed George W. Bush's legal team in the state. He served as the co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, which Congress formed in 2006 to study Iraq and the ongoing Iraq War. He serves on the World Justice Project and the Climate Leadership Council. Baker is the namesake of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.[2] Since the death of Henry Kissinger in 2023, he is currently the oldest living former United States secretary of state, as well as the earliest serving.
Early life, education, and pre-political career[edit]
James Addison Baker III was born in Houston at 1216 Bissonnet St.,[3] the son of James A. Baker Jr. (1892–1973) and Ethel Bonner (née Means) Baker (August 6, 1894 – April 26, 1991). His father was a partner of Houston law firm Baker Botts. Baker has a sister, Bonner Baker Moffitt.[4] His grandfather was attorney and banker Captain James A. Baker, and his great-grandfather was jurist and politician Judge James A. Baker.
Baker attended the Kinkaid School in Houston, before graduating from the Hill School, a boarding school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He graduated cum laude with an A.B. in history from Princeton University in 1952 after completing a 188-page senior thesis, titled "Two Sides of the Conflict: Bevin vs. Bevan", under the supervision of Walter P. Hall.[5] He was a member of Phi Delta Theta. Baker was a member of the United States Marine Corps from 1952 to 1954, attaining the rank of first lieutenant as a naval gunfire officer serving in the Mediterranean Sea aboard the USS Monrovia. He remained in the Marine Corps Reserve until 1958, and rose to the rank of captain. He earned a Bachelor of Laws (1957) from the University of Texas School of Law and began to practice law in Texas.[6]
From 1957 to 1975, he practiced law at Andrews & Kurth after the anti-nepotism policy of his family firm, Baker Botts, prevented him from being offered a job there.[7][8]
Early political career[edit]
Baker's first wife, the former Mary Stuart McHenry, was active in the Republican Party, working on the congressional campaigns of George H. W. Bush. Originally, Baker had been a Democrat but too busy trying to succeed in a competitive law firm to worry about politics, and considered himself apolitical. His wife's influence led him to politics and the Republican Party. George H.W. Bush and Baker were regular tennis partners at the Houston Country Club in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and when Bush decided to vacate his congressional seat and run for the U.S. Senate in 1970, he supported Baker's decision to run in his place. However, Baker changed his mind about running for Congress when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer; she died in February 1970.
Bush then encouraged Baker to become active in politics to help deal with the grief of his wife's death, something that Bush himself had done when his daughter, Pauline Robinson Bush (1949–1953), died of leukemia. Baker became chairman of Bush's Senate campaign in Harris County, Texas. Though Bush lost to Lloyd Bentsen in the election, Baker continued in politics, becoming the finance chairman of the Texas Republican Party in 1971. The following year, he was selected as Gulf Coast Regional Chairman for the Richard Nixon presidential campaign. In 1973 and 1974, in the wake of the Nixon administration's implosion over Watergate, Baker returned to full-time law practice at Andrews & Kurth.[9][10]
Baker's time away from politics was brief, however. In August 1975, he was appointed Under Secretary of Commerce by President Gerald Ford, succeeding John K. Tabor.[11] He served until May 1976, and was succeeded by Edward O. Vetter.[12] Baker resigned to serve as campaign manager of Ford's unsuccessful 1976 election campaign. In 1978, with George H. W. Bush as his campaign manager, Baker ran unsuccessfully for Attorney General of Texas, losing to future Texas governor Mark White.
Personal life[edit]
Baker met his first wife, the former Mary Stuart McHenry, of Dayton, Ohio, while on spring break in Bermuda with the Princeton University rugby team. They married in 1953. Together they had four sons, including James Addison Baker IV (1954), a partner at Baker Botts[56] as well as Stuart McHenry Baker (1956), John Coalter Baker (1960), and Douglas Bland Baker (1961) of Baker Global Advisory.
Mary Stuart Baker died of breast cancer on February 18, 1970.[57]
In 1973, Baker and Susan Garrett Winston, a divorcée and a close friend of Mary Stuart, were married.[10] Winston had two sons and a daughter with her former husband. In September of 1977, she and Baker had a daughter, Mary Bonner Baker.
On June 15, 2002, Virginia Graeme Baker, the seven-year-old granddaughter of Baker, daughter of Nancy and James Baker IV, drowned due to suction entrapment in a spa.[58] To promote greater safety in pools and spas, Nancy Baker gave testimony to the Consumer Product Safety Commission,[59] and James Baker helped form an advocacy group,[60] which led to the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool And Spa Safety Act (15 USC 8001).[61] Another granddaughter, Rosebud Baker, is a stand-up comedian.[62]
