name | James Baker |
---|---|
order | 61st |
title | United States Secretary of State |
president | George H.W. Bush |
term start | January 20, 1989 |
term end | August 23, 1992 |
predecessor | George P. Shultz |
successor | Lawrence Eagleburger |
order2 | 67th |
title2 | United States Secretary of the Treasury |
term start2 | February 4, 1985 |
term end2 | August 17, 1988 |
predecessor2 | Donald Regan |
successor2 | Nicholas F. Brady |
president2 | Ronald Reagan |
order3 | 10th and 16th |
title3 | White House Chief of Staff |
term start3 | August 24, 1992 |
term end3 | January 20, 1993 |
predecessor3 | Samuel Skinner |
successor3 | Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty |
president3 | George H.W. Bush |
term start4 | January 20, 1981 |
term end4 | February 3, 1985 |
predecessor4 | Jack Watson |
successor4 | Donald T. Regan |
president4 | Ronald Reagan |
birth date | April 28, 1930 |
birth place | Houston, Texas |
party | Republican |
religion | Episcopalian |
alma mater | Princeton UniversityUniversity of Texas-Austin |
spouse | Mary Stuart McHenry(1953–1970; her death)Susan Garrett Baker(1973–present) |
profession | Lawyer/Politician |
signature | James Addison Baker, III Signature.svg |
branch | United States Marine Corps |
rank | Captain |
serviceyears | 1952–1954 (active) }} |
Baker served as the Chief of Staff in President Ronald Reagan's first administration and in the final year of the administration of President George H. W. Bush. Baker also served as Secretary of the Treasury from 1985–1988 in the second Reagan administration, and Secretary of State in the George H. W. Bush administration. He is also the namesake of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Baker attended The Hill School, a boarding school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Princeton University in 1952. Afterwards, he earned a J.D. (1957) from The University of Texas at Austin and began to practice law in Texas.
Baker served in the United States Marine Corps (1952–1954), attaining the rank of First Lieutenant and later rising to Captain in the United States Marine Corps Reserve.
From 1957 to 1969, and then from 1973 to 1975 he practiced law at the law firm of Andrews & Kurth.
Bush then encouraged Baker to become active in politics to help deal with the grief, something Bush had done when his daughter, Pauline Robinson (1949–1953), died of leukemia. Baker became chairman of Bush's Senate campaign in Harris County. Though Bush lost to Lloyd Bentsen in the election, Baker continued in politics, becoming the Finance Chairman of the 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, Baker returned to full time practice of law at Andrews & Kurth.
Baker served as Undersecretary of Commerce under President Gerald Ford in 1975, and ran Ford's unsuccessful re-election campaign in 1976. In 1978, Baker ran unsuccessfully to become Attorney General of Texas, losing to future Governor Mark White.
In 1982, conservative activists Howard Phillips, founder of The Conservative Caucus and Clymer Wright of Houston joined in an unsuccessful effort to convince Reagan to dismiss Baker as Chief of Staff. They claimed that Baker, a former Democrat and a Bush political intimate, was undermining conservative initiatives in the administration. Reagan rejected the Phillips-Wright request, but in 1985, he named Baker as United States Secretary of the Treasury, in a job-swap with then Secretary Donald T. Regan, a former Merrill Lynch officer who became Chief of Staff. Reagan rebuked Phillips and Wright for having waged a "campaign of sabotage" against Baker.
Baker managed Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign in which Reagan polled a record 525 electoral votes total (of 538 possible), and received 58.8 percent of the popular vote to Walter Mondale's 40.6 percent.
While serving as Treasury Secretary, Baker organized the Plaza Accord of September 1985 and the Baker Plan to target international debt. He had Richard Darman of Massachusetts as his Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Darman would continue in the next administration as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
During the Reagan administration, Baker also served on the Economic Policy Council, where he played an instrumental role in achieving the passage of the administration's tax and budget reform package in 1981.
Baker also served on Reagan's National Security Council, and remained Treasury Secretary until 1988, during which time he also served as campaign chairman for George H. W. Bush's successful presidential bid.
President George H.W. Bush appointed Baker Secretary of State in 1989. Baker served in this role through 1992. From 1992 to 1993, he served as Bush's White House Chief of Staff, the same position that he had held from 1981 to 1985 during the first Reagan administration.
On January 9, 1991, during the Geneva Peace Conference with Tariq Aziz in Geneva, Baker declared that "If there is any user of (chemical or biological weapons), our objectives won't just be the liberation of Kuwait, but the elimination of the current Iraqi regime...." Baker later acknowledged that the intent of this statement was to threaten a retaliatory nuclear strike on Iraq, and the Iraqis received his message Baker helped to construct the 34-nation alliance that fought alongside the United States in the Gulf War.
He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.
Baker blocked the creation of Palestine by threatening to cut funding to agencies in the United Nations: As far back as 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) issued a "declaration of statehood” and changed the name of its observer delegation to the United Nations from the PLO to Palestine.
Secretary of State James Baker warned publicly, “I will recommend to the President that the United States make no further contributions, voluntary or assessed, to any international organization which makes any changes in the PLO's status as an observer organization."
In 1995, Baker published his memoirs of service as Secretary of State in a book entitled The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992 (ISBN 0-399-14087-5).
In March 1997, Baker became the Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Western Sahara. In June 2004 he resigned from this position, frustrated over the lack of progress in reaching a complete settlement acceptable to both the government of Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front. He left behind the Baker II plan, accepted as a suitable basis of negotiations by the Polisario and unanimously endorsed by the Security Council, but rejected by Morocco.
In addition to the numerous recognitions received by Baker, he was presented with the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Award for public service on September 13, 2000 in Washington, D.C..
On September 11, 2001, Baker watched television coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington DC, where Baker and representatives of Osama bin Laden's family were among those attending the annual conference for the Carlyle Group. Baker is Senior Counselor for the Carlyle Group, and the bin Ladens are among its major investors.
State of Denial, a book by investigative reporter Bob Woodward, says that White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, urged President Bush to replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with Baker following the 2004 election. However, another G. H. W. Bush Administration veteran, Robert Gates, was appointed instead, and only after the 2006 elections. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.
On March 15, 2006, Congress announced the formation of the Iraq Study Group, a high-level panel of prominent former officials charged by members of Congress with taking a fresh look at America's policy on Iraq. Baker was the Republican co-chair along with Democratic Representative Lee H. Hamilton, to advise Congress on Iraq. Baker also advised George W. Bush on Iraq.
The Iraq Study Group examined a number of ideas, including one that would create a new power-sharing arrangement in Iraq that would give more autonomy to regional factions. On October 9, 2006, the Washington Post quoted co-chairman Baker as saying "our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of 'stay the course' and 'cut and run'".
Until 2005 he was senior counsel to the Carlyle Group and is currently a senior partner at the law firm of Baker Botts.
In 1973, Baker and Susan Garrett Winston, a close friend of Mary Stuart's, were married. They have six sons and two daughters.
On June 15, 2002, Virginia Graeme Baker, the 7-year-old granddaughter of Baker, daughter of Nancy and James Baker IV, was the victim of suction-pump entrapment in an in-ground spa. To promote greater safety in pools and spas, Nancy Baker gave testimony to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and James Baker helped form an advocacy group, which led to the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool And Spa Safety Act (15 USC 8001).
{{U.S. Cabinet Official box | before= Jack Watson | after= Donald Regan | years= 1981–1985 | president= Ronald Reagan | office= White House Chief of Staff}} {{U.S. Secretary box | before=Donald Regan | after=Nicholas F. Brady | years=1985–1988 | president= Ronald Reagan | department= Secretary of the Treasury}} {{U.S. Secretary box | before=George P. Shultz | after=Lawrence Eagleburger | years=1989–1992 | president= George H.W. Bush | department= Secretary of State}} {{U.S. Cabinet Official box | before= Samuel K. Skinner | after= Mack McLarty | years= 1992–1993 | president= George H.W. Bush | office= White House Chief of Staff}}
Category:1930 births Category:American Episcopalians Category:American campaign managers Category:American memoirists Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:George W. Bush Administration personnel Category:Living people Category:People from Houston, Texas Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Presidents of the United Nations Security Council Category:Princeton University alumni Category:Reagan Administration personnel Category:Texas Republicans Category:Texas lawyers Category:The Hill School alumni Category:United States Marine Corps officers Category:United States Secretaries of State Category:United States Secretaries of the Treasury Category:University of Texas School of Law alumni Category:White House Chiefs of Staff
ar:جيمس بيكر bg:Джеймс Бейкър ca:James Baker cs:James Baker da:James Baker de:James Baker et:James Baker es:James Baker fa:جیمز بیکر fr:James Baker ko:제임스 베이커 id:James Baker it:James Baker he:ג'יימס בייקר hu:James Baker nl:James Baker ja:ジェイムズ・ベイカー (国務長官) no:James Baker pl:James Baker pt:James Baker ru:Бейкер, Джеймс simple:James Baker fi:James Baker sv:James Baker uk:Бейкер Джеймс vi:James Baker zh:詹姆斯·贝克This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.