The Man Who Ran Washington

Baker thought the country had gone seriously off course. The point of holding power is to get things done and accomplish things, he told us once in the summer of 2014, his voice rising almost an octave in exasperation. He pressed that point whenever the current generation called for advice, which they still did fairly often, but he seemed mystified that the message was not getting through. The argument I ve been making, he said, is that we re not leading.

Now, on that Halloween morning in 2016, Trump seemed like a catastrophic herald of the system s breakdown. The guy is nuts, Baker sighed as we talked in the sunny oval sitting room of his suite. He s crazy. I will not endorse him. I ve said that publicly. I ve told him that. Trump was promising a destructive end to the Washington-led world order that Baker and others had spent a generation designing. He disparaged long-standing alliances, vowed to rip up free trade pacts, decried American leadership outside its borders, casually embraced a new nuclear arms race, and sought to reverse the globalization that had defined international politics and economics since the end of World War II. He opposed just about everything that Baker and the modern Republican Party supported and Baker ticked them off for us again that morning: He s against free trade. He s talking about NATO being a failed alliance. He s dumping all over NAFTA, the trade pact with Mexico and Canada that Baker had helped set in motion. Baker still backed it, as did the vast bulk of his party. That was a hell of a deal, he said, shaking his head. Yet in Trump s view, the leaders of the past Baker and his contemporaries had bungled their chance and squandered American greatness. Trump s campaign, as quixotic as i

power in Washington or anywhere, for that matter this is the book for you.
Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, authors of The Wise Men

Monumental. . . . It ll live forever, and it ought to be in every library in America, because it s not just about Jim Baker. It s about how government really works. . . . Epic.
Tom Brokaw
 
This book is a window into the way power works, in the tradition of Caro.
Robert Costa

Towering. . . . A fascinating, engrossing and dishy read. I think it sets a new standard in the genre. I loved it and highly recommend to anyone interested in politics and history.
Julie Mason

To capture the sweep and relevance of one of the most influential figures in American life requires two of the great reporters and observers of our time. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser have written a grand, precise, and engaging American tale that gallops from Houston Country Club to the convention floor, to the Oval Office and all over the globe, capturing James Baker s ambition, influence, and style as well as telling the story of power and America at the end of an age.
John Dickerson, author of The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency
 
A fascinating perspective on power and influence. . . in their nuanced portrait of Baker, he emerges as far more interesting than his taciturn image as White House chief of staff, secretary of state, secretary of treasury.
The National Book Review

A riveting and, at times, moving read.
Derek Burney, Policy Magazine

Baker and Glasser pull no punches . . . a delicious read for lovers of history.
Washington Independent Review of Books

"If you love palace intrigue and are interested in the behind the scene workings of the executive branch of the federal government at its highest echelons, especially the Oval Office, then Baker s and Glasser s book about the extraordinary life of James Aldrich Baker III should be at the top of your reading list."
New York Law Journal

Exhaustively reported and fluently written, the book, appropriately for its subject, is a throwback. Like Theodore H. White s Making of the President series, it celebrates the traditional arts of American politics and governing not excluding strategic deception, faux histrionics, horse-trading, turf-guarding, lethal leaking, and ass-covering all in a good cause.
Edward Kosner, Commentary Magazine

Publication of the Baker biography could not have been better timed, because never has the Republican Party needed someone like Jim Baker as bad as it does today, with Donald Trump s ham-handed, if not treasonous, attempts to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election.
The Hill

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser s The Man Who Ran Washington is an erudite, searching, affectionate biography. Showcasing elegant writing, critical detachment, and encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. presidential history, every page glows with excellence. It s an epic study of how one brazen Texan married the crude American political power dynamic with old-fashioned velvet diplomacy to help win the Cold War. A stunning achievement!
Douglas Brinkley, author of American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race

No one has ever captured James Baker s historical importance and essential nature as well as Peter Baker and Susan Glasser have in this superlatively reported history. This is a history not only of a man but of late twentieth century politics in America, and though there are some things I saw from a different angle, that isn't the point. The point is that a great history of a serious man has been produced, and deserves huzzahs and cheers.
Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal columnist and author of What I Saw at the Revolution
 
The Man Who Ran Washington is a must-read tour de force of political history and biography. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, two of our best journalists and scholars, bring us the life of one of the nation s most important secretaries of state and presidential counselors, showing James Baker near the center of more than thirty years of important American and world history.
Michael Beschloss, author of Presidents of War

"In the best of the biographic tradition, the authors tell of an important and consequential man in a consequential era."
Neil Hassler, RealClearDefense