After his heroic service as the youngest Naval combat pilot in the Second World War, George Herbert Walker Bush left the aristocracy of the Northeastern United States for Texas to make his mark on his own. His father, Prescott Bush had served as a United States senator from Connecticut. He tried his luck in the oil business, preferring risk over the security of his family’s domain.

That post-war Texas was very Democratic, the party of Sam Rayburn, Lyndon Johnson, and John Connally. The Lonestar State, like much of the Old Confederacy, which was part of, was becoming more Republican. After over a decade of concentrating on his business, Bush felt confident enough to run for the US Senate in 1964. He lost, but in 1966 was elected to the House of Representatives from the Houston area where he’d serve two terms. In 1970, he’d take a shot at the Senate again, losing to Lloyd Bentsen, who would revisit his life almost two decades later.

During the 1950s at Houston Country Club, Bush met James Addison Baker III an attorney from a long line of Texas lawyers. They became friends and tennis partners. When Baker’s wife Mary Stuart died in 1970, he became more active in politics to distract from his grieving even though his grandfather had advised him to ‘Work hard, study, and keep out of politics!’. In the mid-seventies he was appointed as an assistant secretary of commerce and ended up running President Gerald Ford’s general election campaign in 1976, Baker engineered a strong comeback Ford narrowly lost.    

Bush had made enough of an impression within the Republican Party that he received several significant appointments in the 1970s. He was lucky to avoid the Watergate crime net, which boosted his status. He was considered as a replacement for Vice President Spiro Agnew in 1973. He decided to seek the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1980 with Baker as his campaign manager. He finished second to Ronald Reagan and became his running mate and vice president.

Baker went on to be one of Reagan’s ‘troika’ along with Californians Michael Deaver and Edwin Meese. The three ran the Gipper’s White House, sharing duties. Baker took on most of the Chief of Staff duties and is considered the gold standard for that task. In 1985, he and Secretary of the Treasury Don Regan switched jobs. Bush sought the presidency again in 1988. He chose fiery South Carolinian Lee Atwater to run his campaign, with the expectation that Baker was waiting in the wing. A biographer of Atwater titled his work ‘Bad Boy,’ to give you an example of this personality.

George Bush and James Baker were courtly aristocratic gentlemen. They were born with silver spoons and acted accordingly, most of the time. Baker would acquire the nickname the “Velvet Hammer.’ When Baker left the Treasury to take over the campaign in the summer of 1988, Bush was seventeen points behind the Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis. He intended to make his friend president of the United States, and he was promised the office of Secretary of State.

Dukakis was attacked on membership in the American Civil Liberties Union, the flag, a furlough program in Massachusetts centered around a black man named Willie Horton (implicit racism), and was pegged as a liberal- which had never been a dirty word before. The campaign is oft described as one of the nastiest in American History.

George Bush became president and James Baker the Secretary of State. Atwater died at the age of forty in 1991 but made many amends and apologies before passing. Bush lost his bid for reelection in 1992, with Baker back somewhat reluctantly running the campaign.

When George W. Bush needed help in the 2000 Florida election controversy and recount, he needed someone on the ground to monitor activities. ‘Who ya gonna call?’ His dad’s BFF, James Baker. As you know ‘W’ won Florida, the election, and was reelected in 2004.

“Poppy” Bush died in 2018 at ninety-four and a half, the longest-lived president until centenarian Jimmy Carter passed him. Baker is ninety-four, and the next White House Chief of Staff just may call or pay him a visit.