Everything about Howard Baker totally explained
Howard Henry Baker, Jr. (born
November 15,
1925) is a former
Senate Majority Leader,
Republican U.S. Senator from
Tennessee,
White House Chief of Staff, and a former
United States Ambassador to
Japan.
Known in
Washington, D.C. as the "Great Conciliator," Baker is often regarded as one of the most successful senators in terms of brokering compromises, enacting legislation, and maintaining civility. A story is sometimes told of a reporter telling a senior
Democratic senator that privately, a plurality of his Democratic colleagues would vote for Baker for
President of the United States. The senator is reported to have replied, "You're wrong. He'd win a majority."
Family history
Baker was born in
Huntsville, in
Scott County, Tennessee. He attended
The McCallie School in
Chattanooga, and after graduating he attended
Tulane University in
New Orleans. During
World War II, he trained at a U.S. Navy facility on the campus of the
University of the South in
Sewanee, Tennessee. He served in the
United States Navy from
1943 to
1946 and graduated from the
University of Tennessee College of Law in
1949. That same year, he was admitted to the Tennessee bar and commenced his practice. The rotunda at the University of Tennessee College of Law is now named for him. While delivering a commencement speech during his grandson’s graduation at
East Tennessee State University (
Johnson City), Baker was awarded an honorary doctorate degree on
May 5,
2007. Baker is an alumnus of the
Pi Kappa Phi fraternity.
Baker's father,
Howard H. Baker, Sr., served as a Republican member of the
United States House of Representatives from
1951 until
1964. He represented a traditionally Republican district in east Tennessee.
Political career
The younger Baker began his own political career in 1964, when he lost an election to fill the unexpired term of the late Senator
Estes Kefauver to the liberal Democrat
Ross Bass. In the 1966 Senate election, Bass lost the Democratic primary to former
Governor Frank G. Clement. In the general election, Baker capitalized on Clement's failure to energize the Democratic base, specifically Tennessee labor, and won. He thus became the first elected Republican senator from Tennessee since
Reconstruction.
In 1971, President
Richard Nixon asked Baker to fill one of two empty seats on the
U.S. Supreme Court. When Baker took too long to decide whether he wanted the appointment or not, Nixon changed his mind and decided to nominate
William Rehnquist instead.
Baker was re-elected in 1972 and again in 1978, and served from
January 3, 1967, to
January 3, 1985. For the last eight of those years, he led the Senate Republicans, with two terms as
Senate Minority Leader (1977–1981) and two terms as
Senate Majority Leader (1981–1985). Baker was also the influential ranking minority member of the
Senate committee, chaired by Senator
Sam Ervin, that investigated the
Watergate scandal. He is famous for having asked aloud, "What did the President know and when did he know it?", a question given him to ask by his counsel and former
campaign manager, future U.S. Senator
Fred Thompson.
Baker ran for President in
1980, dropping out of the race for the GOP nomination after losing the
Iowa caucuses to
George H.W. Bush and the
New Hampshire Primary to
Ronald Reagan. Baker's duties as Senate Minority Leader prevented him from campaigning heavily in these important early test races.
He didn't seek re-election in 1984, and received the
Presidential Medal of Freedom the same year. However, as a testament to his skill as a negotiator and honest and amiable broker, Reagan tapped him to serve as
Chief of Staff during part of his second term (1987–1988). Many saw this as a move to mend relations with the Senate, which had deteriorated somewhat under the previous Chief of Staff,
Donald Regan. (Baker had complained that Regan had become a too-powerful "
Prime Minister" inside an increasingly complex
Imperial Presidency.) In accepting this appointment, Baker chose to skip another bid for the White House in
1988.
In 2001, the
Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy was set up at the
University of Tennessee in honor of the former senator. Vice President
Dick Cheney gave a speech at the 2005 ground-breaking ceremony for the Center's new building.
Baker is an Advisory Board member for the
Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy.
Honors
Personal life
Baker has been married to the daughters of two prominent Republicans. Since 1996 he's been married to former U.S. Senator
Nancy Landon Kassebaum, the daughter of the late
Kansas Governor
Alfred M. Landon, who was the Republican nominee for
President in 1936. Baker's late first wife, Joy, who died of
cancer, was the daughter of former Senate Minority Leader
Everett Dirksen. Howard Baker is a
Presbyterian.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Howard Baker'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://howard_baker.totallyexplained.com">Howard Baker Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
