James A. Baker

Overview

A lifelong member of the Republican party, James A. Baker served as Ronald Reagan's White House chief of staff, secretary of the treasury, and secretary of state, as well as George H. W. Bush's White House chief of staff, and in various roles for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Baker also oversaw George W. Bush's legal team in the Florida recount during the 2000 presidential election as his chief legal counsel, served as a consultant to Enron, and served as co-chairman of Congress's Iraq Study Group to examine America's policy on Iraq.
- IMDb mini biography by: L.M.

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1985-1988 in the second Ronald Reagan administration.
Secretary of State (1989-1993) during the George H.W. Bush administration.
He is Honorary Chairman of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. It is a non-partisan institution whose aim is to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of public policy by drawing together experts from academia, government, the media, business, and non-governmental organizations. Members of the Board of Advisors have included Lloyd Bentsen, Shimon Peres, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and John Major.
Chief of Staff in President Ronald Reagan's first administration and in the final year of the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
Attended The Hill School, a boarding school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Graduated from Princeton University in 1952. Afterwards, earned a J.D. (1957) for The University of Texas at Austin and began to practice law in Texas.

[the best advice he'd ever gotten] Don't ever wing it. Make sure that if you do something, you're going to do it right. And that means be prepared.
[on Israel and its neighbors] There is still hope for a two-state solution, because I don't think there is any other way that Israel can maintain both its democratic character and its Jewish character.
[on the American response to the Ukraine situation, 2015] Our response has been severely tepid. I don't think you can stand up and say that if they keep doing this, there are going to be grave consequences, and then they keep doing it and we don't do anything.
[on dealing with the ISIS threat] I don't think you can win this war through the air. We're going to have to find some way to get some boots on the ground, and those boots should not be American boots. We've had quite enough of young Americans bleeding and dying in the Middle East for a while.

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