Lessons in Leadership from Howard Baker

It has been 40 years since Howard Baker, the Tennessee Republican, at the peak of his career, retired from the Senate at the age of 59 after serving three terms, including four years as Minority Leader and four as Majority Leader. Baker reached for the presidency and was defeated; he is not a household name like Ted Kennedy or John McCain, and there are no buildings in Washington. D.C., named for him. He is virtually unknown to those under 50, and even older Americans recall him only for his famous question during the Watergate hearings: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

And yet, Howard Baker may have been the most universally admired political leader of the past 50 years. It was often said that if the senators could vote for president in a secret ballot, Baker would have won. Given the public’s deep and abiding distrust of politicians and anger about the failure of our institutions, Baker’s career teaches lessons in leadership that are more relevant today than ever before

For Howard Baker, politics was the family business. His father, Howard Henry Baker, Sr., was a Tennessee congressman who died in office, and his stepmother, Irene Baker, succeeded him. In 1951, Baker married Joy Dirksen, the daughter of the legendary Republican Everett Dirksen, who would go on to become Senate Minority Leader and the namesake of the Senate office building. Dirksen played an essential part in Baker’s rise after an early stumble. He lost his first bid for the Senate in 1964, as the Republicans led by Barry Goldwater were crushed nationally. But he ran again two years later, won handily, and reached the Senate at 41.

Despite the seniority system and the tradition that freshman senators should be seen rather than heard, Baker was immediately an impactful senator. A lawyer with a penchant for photography and another for engineering, he had a practical intellect. He quickly learned how to work across the partisan aisle to achieve important results, joining Democrats Ted Kennedy on major voting rights legislation and Ed Muskie in crafting the landmark amendments to the Clean Air Act.

What set Baker apart was his extraordinary, even temperament. Although seemingly laid back and folksy, he was intensely ambitious; after Dirksen died in 1969, Baker sought to become Senate Republican leader, trying to do so faster than Republican in Senate history. By a vote of 24-19, his conference colleagues rejected that chutzpah elevating veteran senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania. (Baker challenged Scott two years later, even though the position was not open, and Scott again defeated him, this time by a vote of 24-20.)

Such ambitions might have doomed his aspirations, but Baker was so likable, and his talents so universally recognized that neither his brashness nor his defeats ever seemed to matter to his standing in the Senate. This was also true among the Washington press corps during Baker’s early Senate service; James D. Squires, chief of the Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau, recalled: “We all liked Howard Baker from the first time we met. He was such a likable fellow. You couldn’t know this guy without liking him and respecting him. It didn’t matter what party he was.”

In 1971, President Richard Nixon, smarting from the Senate’s rejection of two of his Supreme Court nominees, offered Baker a seat on the Court, which Baker mulled over before deciding that he was much too young for the cloistered life of a justice. He later told Orrin Hatch, a freshman senator: “Funeral homes are livelier than the Court.”

In 1973, after the revelations of Nixon’s abuses of power first surfaced, Hugh Scott, looking for the most attractive television performer among the Senate Republicans, chose Baker to be Vice Chairman of the Select Watergate Committee. The historic hearings in the summer of 1973 inevitably paved the way for Nixon’s resignation from the presidency a year later. The hearings also made Baker a national celebrity, leading directly to his becoming Senate Republican leader in January 1977 after Scott’s retirement, when the Republicans needed to present an attractive alternative to the Democrats riding high after Nixon’s downfall, a sweeping Congressional victory in 1974, and Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976. Baker did not take the Watergate committee position looking to be an enemy of the White House with whom he and his counsel, Fred Thompson, consulted frequently. The famed what-did-he-know question was aimed at former White House Counsel John Dean, who spilled the beans on the Watergate coverup and was meant to undermine Dean’s memory.

But it’s to Baker’s eternal credit that as the evidence mounted against the president and his top aides, the Tennessean aggressively pursued the truth and signed on to the committee’s report. Unlike some GOP members of the panel, he was not a Nixon dead-ender.

In the next eight years, serving as Senate minority leader during the Carter presidency and Senate majority leader during Ronald Reagan’s first term, Baker posted a record of achievement unmatched in Senate history.

What accounted for Baker’s extraordinary success? He demonstrated an unparalleled ability to work with anyone, listened more than he spoke, and benefited from his wry humor. “Being leader of the Senate was like herding cats,” Baker said in 1998. “It is trying to make 99 independent souls act in concert under rules that encourage polite anarchy and embolden people who find majority rule a dubious proposition at best.” Yet Baker had an exceptional ability to bridge seemingly irreconcilable views through a disarming and conciliatory brand of bargaining. Lisa Myers, later of NBC News, would write in the Washington Star: “To hear [senators] talk, Howard Henry Baker could bring together a boll weevil and a cotton planter.”

Baker’s temperament—moderate and fair-minded—was his greatest asset. His stepmother, a distinguished politician in her own right, once said: “Howard is like the Tennessee River. He always runs right down the middle.” A gifted amateur photographer, Baker had an uncanny ability to be at the center of the action while somehow being removed enough to observe the whole picture. However, his success also reflected how he saw his responsibilities as a political leader, based on his deep understanding of American government and history. Baker explained his approach when invited to speak to the Senate in 1998, fourteen years after his retirement when the bonds of Senate bipartisanship were already fraying:

People think our debates are fraudulent if we can put aside our passion so quickly and embrace our adversaries so readily. But we aren’t crazy, and we aren’t frauds. The ritual is as natural as breathing here in the Senate, and it is as important as anything that happens in Washington or in the country that we serve.

It’s what makes us America and not Bosnia. It’s what makes us the most stable government on earth and not another civil war ready to happen.

We are doing the business of the American people. We do it every day. We have to do it with the same people every day. And if we cannot be civil to one another, and if we stop dealing with those with whom we disagree, or that we don’t like, we would soon stop functioning altogether.

Immediately after being chosen to be Senate Minority Leader in 1977, Baker began an unmatched relationship with the new Democratic leader of the Senate, Robert C. Byrd, a much more guarded personality, disarming him with one request: “Don’t ever surprise me.” They built an extraordinary partnership, which sustained a period of Senate accomplishment even when they switched roles after the 1980 election.

Baker also built a remarkable relationship with Jimmy Carter, even though Baker hoped to run against Carter for the presidency. Bakerlike Senate Leaders Mike Mansfield, Everett Dirksen, Lyndon Johnson, and Hugh Scott recognized his responsibility to work with the president and even the other party. Baker contributed to many of Carter’s accomplishments in foreign and domestic policy—energy policy, rescuing New York and Chrysler, arms sales to the Middle East, and saving Alaska lands—while opposing Carter on crucial issues, such as labor law reform and the SALT 2 treaty, where their differences were insurmountable. Decades later, Jimmy Carter would reflect on the obstruction of Barack Obama’s agenda by Senate Republicans: “I had one thing that Obama didn’t have: a Congress I could work with.” By that, he meant a Senate where Howard Baker led the Republicans.

Although Baker is best remembered as one of the heroes in the Watergate drama, his most remarkable work came when Jimmy Carter decided to negotiate two treaties by which the Panama Canal would be returned to Panama. Five presidents before Carter, starting with Eisenhower, had recognized the damage that anger about American control of the Canal was doing to America’s relationship with Panama and Latin America but chose to do nothing about it. With tensions rising in Panama, Carter decided it was imperative to act. Many years later, Baker would remember his reaction to Carter’s call in August 1977 asking for his support. “I wished he hadn’t asked,” Baker said. “It was an unwelcome challenge.” He wondered then: “This has been kicking around for years. Why now, and why me?”

Baker faced an emboldened far-right faction of his party, led by former California Governor Ronald Reagan, who had almost knocked off President Gerald Ford in the 1976 primaries and vehemently opposed any treaty ceding sovereignty over the “path between the seas.” Moreover, Baker planned to run for president in 1980. His staff told Baker what he already knew: supporting the Panama Canal treaties would end his candidacy. “So be it,” Baker responded. He was the Senate leader and had to do what was best for the country. Once he was satisfied that returning the Panama Canal to Panama—with guarantees that he insisted on to protect America’s right to defend the Canal, including against the Panamanians—was the best way to ensure continued access for American ships, Baker supported the treaties, which made Senate’s narrow approval of the treaties possible, despite the fierce opposition of the right-wing Republicans.

Baker sought the Republican nomination in 1980 but was crushed by Reagan, as were other GOP stalwarts like Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush. In 1980, Reagan’s coattails carried in 13 new Republican senators, making Baker the majority leader. Baker described the election as “not just a landslide, but a political earthquake.” Even while celebrating the victory, he commented: “If the New Right leaders think Howard Baker is going to roll over and play dead for them, they are mistaken.” He anticipated the political currents that threatened to dominate his party in 1981, and despite his congeniality, he put down his marker immediately.

It sounds cliché, but Baker’s North Star was his patriotism. Born in 1926, Baker came of age during World War II. One of the youngest members of Tom Brokaw’s “greatest generation,” he joined the Navy in the war’s final months. Baker cared deeply about his beloved Tennessee and was a committed Republican. But the national interest came first, and neither partisanship nor his political interests mattered as much as doing what he judged best for America.

Baker had long believed senators should be “citizen-legislators,” serving a limited number of terms before returning home to their states. Baker’s many friends, political allies, and the whole Senate hoped Baker would change his mind. But on January 21, 1983, Baker announced that he would retire at the end of his term. He enthusiastically endorsed Ronald Reagan for re-election and said he might seek the presidency in 1988. Baker had sought power, won it, exercised power, and now walked away. Alan Simpson of Wyoming expressed the general sentiment in the Senate: “There are many able people, but there is only one Howard Baker.”

Baker’s return to private life lasted only two years. In November 1986, just after the off-year elections, there was a bombshell revelation that the Reagan administration had secretly sold weapons to Iran in violation of a congressional embargo and used the proceeds from the sale to fund support of the Nicaraguan contras battling the Sandinista regime. In the weeks that followed, the “Iran-contra” scandal shook the foundation of Reagan’s presidency and triggered the most significant Congressional investigation since Watergate. With the Democrats now in control of both houses of Congress, impeachment seemed possible. At best, Reagan’s presidency looked moribund.

President Reagan asked Baker, his opponent in 1980 and his political ally since then, to come to the White House as chief of staff. Baker systematically weighed the pros and cons and reached out for advice from friends. John Seigenthaler, the legendary editor of the Nashville Tennessean, responded to Baker: “Dear Howard, the country needs you.”

Baker accepted the job, even though it meant giving up his dream of seeking the presidency again. He and the group of advisers that came to the White House reassured Congress and restored public confidence. Against the odds, Reagan finished his second term strongly, including a historic summit with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, which is generally viewed as a crucial first step toward the end of the Cold War. Late in life, Baker would return to public services as U.S. ambassador to Japan and married fellow senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum, the Kansas Republican whose father ran against Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.

Baker’s singularly brilliant career illustrates a clear lesson of history: the choices and character of leaders make all the difference. Undoubtedly, if Howard Baker had been the Senate Republican leader during Donald Trump’s presidency, he would have treated Trump’s first impeachment seriously. He would have congratulated Joe Biden on his victory immediately, stifling Trump’s ‘big lie” that the election had been stolen. And we are confident that Baker would have voted to convict Trump in the second impeachment trial, bringing many other Senate Republicans with him. It is perhaps a footnote to history that days after Howard Baker retired from the Senate, Mitch McConnell was sworn in after winning his first term. The Kentuckian who had yet to earn his reputation for partisan ruthlessness never had a chance to learn about leadership from the man from Tennessee.

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