The Man Who Ran Washington

The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

Look inside
BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York TimesThe Washington Post • Fortune • Bloomberg

From two of America's most revered political journalists comes the definitive biography of legendary White House chief of staff and secretary of state James A. Baker III: the man who ran Washington when Washington ran the world.


For a quarter century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency or ran the White House without the advice of James Addison Baker III. A scion of Texas aristocracy who became George H. W. Bush’s tennis partner, Baker had never worked in Washington until a devastating family tragedy struck when he was thirty-nine. Within a few years, he was leading Gerald Ford’s campaign and would go on to manage a total of five presidential races and win a sixth for George W. Bush in a Florida recount. He ran Ronald Reagan’s White House and became the most consequential secretary of state since Henry Kissinger. Ruthlessly partisan during campaign season, Baker became an indispensable dealmaker after the election. He negotiated with Democrats at home and Soviets abroad, rewrote the tax code, assembled the coalition that won the Gulf War, brokered the reunification of Germany, and helped bring a decades-long nuclear superpower standoff to an end.

Brilliantly crafted by Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, The Man Who Ran Washington is a page-turning study in the acquisition, exercise, and preservation of power in late twentieth-century America and the story of Washington when Washington ran the world. Their masterly biography is necessary reading and destined to become a classic.
Prologue
The Velvet Hammer
 
A little more than a week before the 2016 presidential election, Jim Baker was obsessing over what to do about Donald Trump. Baker’s wife, daughters, and closest advisers were urging Baker to vote against him. Baker’s best friend, former president George H. W. Bush, his partner for nearly a half century on the tennis courts, on the campaign trail, and on the world stage, had made it clear that he would vote against Trump. So had Bush’s son, former president George W. Bush, and other members of the Bush family.

Throughout the long, nasty campaign, Trump had been attacking the Bushes and pretty much everything they—and Baker—stood for. Trump had asked for an endorsement and Baker had refused, but he still was not sure what to do in the privacy of the voting booth. He saw the modern Republican Party as a global bulwark of open markets, free enterprise, and the American way of life. He had helped to build it and he was used to winning. Now Trump, vain and bombastic, a flashy New York real estate mogul who boasted of grabbing women’s private parts and seemed like a sure loser, threatened to upend all that. But Trump was the party’s nominee, and Baker, late in life, remained a party man.

We sat down with Baker in his favorite suite at the Willard Hotel, the ornate Victorian landmark barely a block away from the White House. Baker was eighty-six years old at the time, although you would not have known it. He wore his customary dark suit with money-green tie, a habit he picked up when he became secretary of the treasury in Ronald Reagan’s second term and had continued ever since. A courtly lawyer with a Texas twang, a perpetual twinkle in his eye, and an ear for gossip, Baker dominated both American politics and policymaking through much of the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s with a mastery rarely seen before or since. But for the last several years, over the course of dozens of hours of interviews, it had become clear that 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 it originally seemed, had tapped into a powerful strain of resentment with his pledge to blow up Washington and remake it in his own image. He promised to drain the very swamp on which the Willard stood.

Voting against Trump should have been an easy call for Baker. Trump, after all, was “a guy who’s his own worst enemy,” as Baker reminded us. “He can’t keep his mouth shut.” But Baker also was not quite ready to walk away from the party to which he had devoted so many years. He knew what it felt like when political power shifted and he knew that it was much better to be on the winning side. He had fought against the Reagan Revolution inside the Republican Party on behalf of Gerald Ford and George Bush, then became the revolution’s most capable executor as Reagan’s White House chief of staff. As Bush’s secretary of state, he had watched the unraveling of the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern Europe, another revolution that Baker did not start but figured out how to channel. The lesson he had taken from these events was simple and it was clear: When the tectonic plates of history move, move with them.

When it came to Trump and the nationalist-populist backlash that he represented, however, Baker just could not decide. It was only days before the election, and he went back and forth. At the end of our long conversation, after touching on Middle East peacemaking and the inner machinations of the Bush White House and the bipartisan prayer group he used to attend on Capitol Hill, we circled back to the subject at hand.

Could Jim Baker, the very definition of the establishment, really vote for Donald Trump?

Baker looked stricken. “Well,” he said, “I haven’t voted for him yet.”
 

Delegate hunter, campaign manager, White House chief of staff, treasury secretary, and secretary of state, James Addison Baker III played a leading role in some of the most critical junctures in modern American history. For a quarter century, every Republican president relied on Baker to manage his campaign, his White House, his world. Baker brought them to power or helped them stay there, then steered them through the momentous events that followed. He was Washington’s indispensable man.

Any chronicle of the modern presidency would find Baker at the heart of virtually every chapter, for his was an unmatched case study in the acquisition, exercise, and preservation of power in late-twentieth-century America and into the first decade of the twenty-first. He was the campaign operative who secured the Republican nomination for Gerald Ford against a relentless challenge from the right by Ronald Reagan in 1976, then four years later managed George Bush’s first presidential campaign, which proved successful enough to earn Bush the vice presidency and Baker a spot by the new president’s side. He set up and ran Reagan’s White House as chief of staff for four years, securing many of the achievements that shaped the legacy of the fortieth president. In Reagan’s second term, with nothing more than an undergraduate course in economics, he took over as secretary of the treasury and rewrote the American tax code from top to bottom in collaboration with leading Democrats. He returned to the campaign trail in 1988 to win the presidency for Bush in a harshly negative election that foreshadowed some of the political nastiness of races to come, then switched back into statesman mode as America’s top diplomat, from which perch he effectively managed the most tumultuous period in international politics since World War II.

Over the following few years, as Washington presided over the of the Cold War, Baker shaped a new American approach to a reordered world. Through it all, he was the archetype of a style of American politics and governance that today seems lost, an approach focused on compromise over confrontation, deal-making over disagreement and pragmatism over purity. He negotiated with Democrats at home and Soviets abroad, assembled the coalition that won the Gulf War and brokered the reunification of Germany in the heart of Europe. He was the “gold standard” among White House chiefs of staff, as virtually everyone put it, and went on to become the most consequential secretary of state since Henry Kissinger. In short, he was the un-Trump.

We had set out to write a biography about Baker during Barack Obama’s presidency, when the nation was already starkly divided but Trump’s ascendance was still unthinkable. As we interviewed Baker and his contemporaries for the book, the increasingly real prospect of a President Trump suggested an even more urgent reason for the project than we had originally envisioned: the unraveling of the political system that Baker had learned to operate so skillfully, at just the moment when the post–Cold War international order that he and his generation had established was fraying. At least to start, a book about Baker had seemed like escapism, offering an opportunity to time-travel back to Washington at the tail end of the Cold War, as the fractious 1980s evolved into a 1990s when America, suddenly, reigned supreme. That was Baker’s moment. Freedom, and McDonald’s, had come to Red Square; apartheid had ended peacefully in South Africa. History was not over, but it was definitely happening, right there for everyone to see on twenty-four-hour cable news. Although that did not erase the partisan conflicts and bitter discord roiling American politics through the Reagan years, and the city had its usual supply of hypocrites and charlatans, demagogues and dilettantes, it was a far more optimistic Washington than today’s angry, anxious capital, a Washington where getting things done was not just possible but required.

Baker seemed to us the representative of that time; certainly, he was the uniquely successful exemplar of it, a hard-edged partisan who nonetheless believed in bipartisanship and thought elections required a record to run on, not merely a provocative position to tweet. But if Baker’s Washington was a more functional, fundamentally more civil place, it was still a capital whose currency was power, populated by political animals for whom access, influence, and image were paramount. Baker was one of them. He was calculating and canny and opportunistic in all the ways that reflected the city whose top jobs he had conquered, one by one. He did not question its injustices, or the insularity of a world populated by white men who looked and sounded like him. Then again, neither did he come to Washington to fight the culture war that animated so many of his fellow Republicans. As our conversation on the eve of Trump’s election suggested, Baker had not become the ultimate Washington player because of his ideological fervor, but because, better than anyone of his generation, he figured out how to wield the levers of power. His doctrine was deal-making. Real deals, ones that stuck, deals that changed the world. And you cannot make deals and get things done while criticizing from the outside. Baker knew that. You have to be on the inside. You have to be allowed to play the game before you can win it.
SILVER MEDAL WINNER OF THE ARTHUR ROSS BOOK AWARD

"A masterclass in political biography."
—The Economist

"An illuminating biographical portrait of Mr. Baker, one that describes the arc of his career and, along the way, tells us something about how executive power is wielded in the nation’s capital. . . often has the feel of a novel."
—The Wall Street Journal

"Enthralling, comprehensive . . . The authors rightly highlight the dimensions of Baker’s illustrious career that show so much about what is broken in the current American political system."
—The New York Times Book Review

“The Man Who Ran Washington . . . will rank alongside it as among the very best books about American political life in the late 20th century.”
—The Washington Post

"A masterly biography."
—The Guardian

"A fascinating look at political power."
—The New York Times

"Immensely informative, nuanced and judicious."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“One of the finest political biographies of the year.”
Dallas Morning News

"Enthralling."
—The Financial Times

"A sweeping history as well as an intimate biography, the book is also a fascinating study of how to acquire power in Washington and how to use it to maximum effect."
—Foreign Affairs

"Accomplished . . . Exhaustively reported and fluently written."
—Commentary

"American political culture is broken, but it hasn’t always been that way. James Addison Baker was the consummate master at actually getting things done in Washington."
—Fortune

"Superlative."
—The American Conservative

“Nobody was better at getting things done than James A. Baker. In a book that is at once fascinating, coolly revealing, and at moments touching, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser have given us a biography worthy of one of the most important figures of the late American Century. If you want to understand 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

About

BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York TimesThe Washington Post • Fortune • Bloomberg

From two of America's most revered political journalists comes the definitive biography of legendary White House chief of staff and secretary of state James A. Baker III: the man who ran Washington when Washington ran the world.


For a quarter century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency or ran the White House without the advice of James Addison Baker III. A scion of Texas aristocracy who became George H. W. Bush’s tennis partner, Baker had never worked in Washington until a devastating family tragedy struck when he was thirty-nine. Within a few years, he was leading Gerald Ford’s campaign and would go on to manage a total of five presidential races and win a sixth for George W. Bush in a Florida recount. He ran Ronald Reagan’s White House and became the most consequential secretary of state since Henry Kissinger. Ruthlessly partisan during campaign season, Baker became an indispensable dealmaker after the election. He negotiated with Democrats at home and Soviets abroad, rewrote the tax code, assembled the coalition that won the Gulf War, brokered the reunification of Germany, and helped bring a decades-long nuclear superpower standoff to an end.

Brilliantly crafted by Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, The Man Who Ran Washington is a page-turning study in the acquisition, exercise, and preservation of power in late twentieth-century America and the story of Washington when Washington ran the world. Their masterly biography is necessary reading and destined to become a classic.

Excerpt

Prologue
The Velvet Hammer
 
A little more than a week before the 2016 presidential election, Jim Baker was obsessing over what to do about Donald Trump. Baker’s wife, daughters, and closest advisers were urging Baker to vote against him. Baker’s best friend, former president George H. W. Bush, his partner for nearly a half century on the tennis courts, on the campaign trail, and on the world stage, had made it clear that he would vote against Trump. So had Bush’s son, former president George W. Bush, and other members of the Bush family.

Throughout the long, nasty campaign, Trump had been attacking the Bushes and pretty much everything they—and Baker—stood for. Trump had asked for an endorsement and Baker had refused, but he still was not sure what to do in the privacy of the voting booth. He saw the modern Republican Party as a global bulwark of open markets, free enterprise, and the American way of life. He had helped to build it and he was used to winning. Now Trump, vain and bombastic, a flashy New York real estate mogul who boasted of grabbing women’s private parts and seemed like a sure loser, threatened to upend all that. But Trump was the party’s nominee, and Baker, late in life, remained a party man.

We sat down with Baker in his favorite suite at the Willard Hotel, the ornate Victorian landmark barely a block away from the White House. Baker was eighty-six years old at the time, although you would not have known it. He wore his customary dark suit with money-green tie, a habit he picked up when he became secretary of the treasury in Ronald Reagan’s second term and had continued ever since. A courtly lawyer with a Texas twang, a perpetual twinkle in his eye, and an ear for gossip, Baker dominated both American politics and policymaking through much of the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s with a mastery rarely seen before or since. But for the last several years, over the course of dozens of hours of interviews, it had become clear that 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 it originally seemed, had tapped into a powerful strain of resentment with his pledge to blow up Washington and remake it in his own image. He promised to drain the very swamp on which the Willard stood.

Voting against Trump should have been an easy call for Baker. Trump, after all, was “a guy who’s his own worst enemy,” as Baker reminded us. “He can’t keep his mouth shut.” But Baker also was not quite ready to walk away from the party to which he had devoted so many years. He knew what it felt like when political power shifted and he knew that it was much better to be on the winning side. He had fought against the Reagan Revolution inside the Republican Party on behalf of Gerald Ford and George Bush, then became the revolution’s most capable executor as Reagan’s White House chief of staff. As Bush’s secretary of state, he had watched the unraveling of the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern Europe, another revolution that Baker did not start but figured out how to channel. The lesson he had taken from these events was simple and it was clear: When the tectonic plates of history move, move with them.

When it came to Trump and the nationalist-populist backlash that he represented, however, Baker just could not decide. It was only days before the election, and he went back and forth. At the end of our long conversation, after touching on Middle East peacemaking and the inner machinations of the Bush White House and the bipartisan prayer group he used to attend on Capitol Hill, we circled back to the subject at hand.

Could Jim Baker, the very definition of the establishment, really vote for Donald Trump?

Baker looked stricken. “Well,” he said, “I haven’t voted for him yet.”
 

Delegate hunter, campaign manager, White House chief of staff, treasury secretary, and secretary of state, James Addison Baker III played a leading role in some of the most critical junctures in modern American history. For a quarter century, every Republican president relied on Baker to manage his campaign, his White House, his world. Baker brought them to power or helped them stay there, then steered them through the momentous events that followed. He was Washington’s indispensable man.

Any chronicle of the modern presidency would find Baker at the heart of virtually every chapter, for his was an unmatched case study in the acquisition, exercise, and preservation of power in late-twentieth-century America and into the first decade of the twenty-first. He was the campaign operative who secured the Republican nomination for Gerald Ford against a relentless challenge from the right by Ronald Reagan in 1976, then four years later managed George Bush’s first presidential campaign, which proved successful enough to earn Bush the vice presidency and Baker a spot by the new president’s side. He set up and ran Reagan’s White House as chief of staff for four years, securing many of the achievements that shaped the legacy of the fortieth president. In Reagan’s second term, with nothing more than an undergraduate course in economics, he took over as secretary of the treasury and rewrote the American tax code from top to bottom in collaboration with leading Democrats. He returned to the campaign trail in 1988 to win the presidency for Bush in a harshly negative election that foreshadowed some of the political nastiness of races to come, then switched back into statesman mode as America’s top diplomat, from which perch he effectively managed the most tumultuous period in international politics since World War II.

Over the following few years, as Washington presided over the of the Cold War, Baker shaped a new American approach to a reordered world. Through it all, he was the archetype of a style of American politics and governance that today seems lost, an approach focused on compromise over confrontation, deal-making over disagreement and pragmatism over purity. He negotiated with Democrats at home and Soviets abroad, assembled the coalition that won the Gulf War and brokered the reunification of Germany in the heart of Europe. He was the “gold standard” among White House chiefs of staff, as virtually everyone put it, and went on to become the most consequential secretary of state since Henry Kissinger. In short, he was the un-Trump.

We had set out to write a biography about Baker during Barack Obama’s presidency, when the nation was already starkly divided but Trump’s ascendance was still unthinkable. As we interviewed Baker and his contemporaries for the book, the increasingly real prospect of a President Trump suggested an even more urgent reason for the project than we had originally envisioned: the unraveling of the political system that Baker had learned to operate so skillfully, at just the moment when the post–Cold War international order that he and his generation had established was fraying. At least to start, a book about Baker had seemed like escapism, offering an opportunity to time-travel back to Washington at the tail end of the Cold War, as the fractious 1980s evolved into a 1990s when America, suddenly, reigned supreme. That was Baker’s moment. Freedom, and McDonald’s, had come to Red Square; apartheid had ended peacefully in South Africa. History was not over, but it was definitely happening, right there for everyone to see on twenty-four-hour cable news. Although that did not erase the partisan conflicts and bitter discord roiling American politics through the Reagan years, and the city had its usual supply of hypocrites and charlatans, demagogues and dilettantes, it was a far more optimistic Washington than today’s angry, anxious capital, a Washington where getting things done was not just possible but required.

Baker seemed to us the representative of that time; certainly, he was the uniquely successful exemplar of it, a hard-edged partisan who nonetheless believed in bipartisanship and thought elections required a record to run on, not merely a provocative position to tweet. But if Baker’s Washington was a more functional, fundamentally more civil place, it was still a capital whose currency was power, populated by political animals for whom access, influence, and image were paramount. Baker was one of them. He was calculating and canny and opportunistic in all the ways that reflected the city whose top jobs he had conquered, one by one. He did not question its injustices, or the insularity of a world populated by white men who looked and sounded like him. Then again, neither did he come to Washington to fight the culture war that animated so many of his fellow Republicans. As our conversation on the eve of Trump’s election suggested, Baker had not become the ultimate Washington player because of his ideological fervor, but because, better than anyone of his generation, he figured out how to wield the levers of power. His doctrine was deal-making. Real deals, ones that stuck, deals that changed the world. And you cannot make deals and get things done while criticizing from the outside. Baker knew that. You have to be on the inside. You have to be allowed to play the game before you can win it.

Praise

SILVER MEDAL WINNER OF THE ARTHUR ROSS BOOK AWARD

"A masterclass in political biography."
—The Economist

"An illuminating biographical portrait of Mr. Baker, one that describes the arc of his career and, along the way, tells us something about how executive power is wielded in the nation’s capital. . . often has the feel of a novel."
—The Wall Street Journal

"Enthralling, comprehensive . . . The authors rightly highlight the dimensions of Baker’s illustrious career that show so much about what is broken in the current American political system."
—The New York Times Book Review

“The Man Who Ran Washington . . . will rank alongside it as among the very best books about American political life in the late 20th century.”
—The Washington Post

"A masterly biography."
—The Guardian

"A fascinating look at political power."
—The New York Times

"Immensely informative, nuanced and judicious."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“One of the finest political biographies of the year.”
Dallas Morning News

"Enthralling."
—The Financial Times

"A sweeping history as well as an intimate biography, the book is also a fascinating study of how to acquire power in Washington and how to use it to maximum effect."
—Foreign Affairs

"Accomplished . . . Exhaustively reported and fluently written."
—Commentary

"American political culture is broken, but it hasn’t always been that way. James Addison Baker was the consummate master at actually getting things done in Washington."
—Fortune

"Superlative."
—The American Conservative

“Nobody was better at getting things done than James A. Baker. In a book that is at once fascinating, coolly revealing, and at moments touching, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser have given us a biography worthy of one of the most important figures of the late American Century. If you want to understand 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