R.I.P., Senator Howard Baker

Three-term Republican Senator from Tennessee Howard Baker died Thursday in his home state. He was 88.

“What did the president know and when did he know it?” That phrase, uttered by Republican Senator Howard Baker during the Senate Watergate Committee hearings on June 29, 1973, will forever be associated with Baker, who died Thursday at 88 in Tennessee.

It’s one of the classic passages of the Watergate hearings. But it’s about the least of Howard Baker’s accomplishments. He was a moderate Republican at a time when there were quite a few of them around, but he was a draft horse. While in the Senate he worked hard and with little thought of his own aggrandizement. He was instrumental in getting the Panama Canal Treaty through the Senate despite his party’s loud and noisy opposition. He worked on environmental issues throughout his career, beginning with the Clean Air Act.

He was tapped by President Ronald Reagan to become Reagan’s Chief of Staff, and he did that well.

Baker skillfully navigated through difficult times, including the Iran–Contra affair. The team he brought around him in the White House and administration, including Ken Duberstein as his deputy chief of staff (who succeeded Baker as chief of staff for the final stage of Reagan’s second term) kept the presidency from foundering and enabled Reagan to finish more strongly than many had predicted.

It occurs to me that it might have been bad for the country in the short run but very helpful overall had Baker failed to keep Reagan’s presidency from “foundering.” Had it done so perhaps the Republican party would have done other than worship at the feet of the man and try to continue his policies for the past 25 years. Our politics and the country’s governance might have been vastly improved.

Nonetheless, Howard Baker was a good man. My respects and condolences to his family.