Jim Baker, Washington's quiet, supreme manipulator, began the first day of the Bush era sitting on the sidelines.
The morning of November 9, 1988, was sunny and warm in Houston, matching the mood of a tired but happy George Bush, who was about to hold his first press conference as president-elect. He had planned to show how much of an energetic, "hands on" president he would be by using the occasion to announce his first two cabinet appointments.
Few people in his own official entourage knew that, and certainly not the assembled reporters, most of whom had been criss-crossing the country with the vice president for more than two years in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination. They were simply too weary from incessant travel and from covering the election returns the night before to have worked up much intellectual curiosity about what Bush would say.
What surprised the press was not that James A. Baker III, his close friend for 30 years, would be the secretary of state in the Bush administration, since most reporters already had written speculative stories to that effect, nor that the vice president chose to make the announcement as his first public act as president-elect.
What did surprise the few Bush insiders who had an inkling of what was supposed to transpire was something else: that Bush did not at the same time announce that another dear friend, Nicholas Brady, would be asked to remain as secretary of the treasury.
"At the last minute, Baker convinced Bush to announce only one appointment at that first press conference, to signal the world that Jim Baker would, in effect, be the deputy president in the Bush administration," a campaign aide said.
Maybe. But some former members of the Reagan-Bush administration suspect that the prominence given to the Baker appointment was, in the words of one former official, "like throwing a bone to Jim because he wouldn't like the sticks coming at him after Bush is sworn in."
Whatever the case, Baker's perceived importance in the scheme of things was evident from the attention of the still photographers and network camera crews. As the press waited for the president-elect to appear before the microphones, Baker, who was chairman of Bush's presidential campaign, sat with other top-ranking campaign and vice-presidential aides in a row of seats well off to the side. But the clicking, whirring cameras had eyes only for the most important man in Bush's political life, Jim Baker.
Bush appeared, announced only Baker's appointment, fielded questions from the reporters, and left. He didn't make the Brady announcement later that day at a tumultuous rally at Andrews Air Force Base either. In the days that followed, the Bush organization denied that Baker would be deputy president and emphasized that nothing should be read into the timing and singularity of the announcement about him and that he would have his hands full running the State Department.
Nevertheless, official Washington took due notice of the fact that Bush delayed making his next cabinet announcement, which indeed
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