Jim Baker “wanted to be remembered for being a statesman,” recalled Derek Chollet, a State Department policy planning officer who helped his former boss write his memoir. “He didn’t want to be remembered as a political guy.”
Indeed, as the immensely informative, nuanced and judicious biography “The Man Who Ran Washington” reminds us, James A. Baker III, a Houston lawyer descended from three generations of lawyers, was one of the most influential unelected public officials of the last quarter of the 20th century. As Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the treasury, he presided over a far-reaching reform of the tax code. As George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state, he played a pivotal role in the end of the Cold War, the reunification of Germany and the first Gulf War.
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