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A sense of humor has helped him as well. Each of his sons is named Lawrence, which he attributes to a combination of ego and a desire "to screw up the Social Security system." (Scott, Drew and Jason go by their middle names.) During his confirmation hearings, one Congressman was disgruntled about the way John Tower, the nominee for Defense Secretary, was being rejected partly because of charges of womanizing. Have you, asked the Congressman, "ever in public or private pinched a woman's behind?" Replied Eagleburger: "Can I divide that into two questions?" Asked by reporters how he planned to run the State Department now that Baker is gone, he deadpans, "Badly."
Every laugh he gets is goodwill in the bank. For a man who has climbed up the foreign service's slippery pole to the highest rank ever achieved by a career diplomat, who spent five years enforcing Henry Kissinger's notoriously impossible demands on the bureaucracy, who is regularly trotted out to testify on the stickiest topics, Eagleburger has remarkably few enemies in Washington.
His comfortable attitude stems in part from the fact that he is only the Acting Secretary -- plunged into the job when Baker left to salvage George Bush's White House and campaign -- and he is not expecting to get the job permanently. If Bush wins in November, Baker will probably come back to the State Department, and Eagleburger will gracefully and gratefully retire to his Virginia farm, where he likes to mow 10 acres of meadow and listen to opera. The same awaits if Bush loses. But there is always the possibility of becoming a semipermanent temp if Bush wins and decides to keep Baker as a domestic- policy czar for a while.
As Deputy Secretary for the past three years, Eagleburger has been able to satisfy Baker, a hard-driving pragmatist who can sniff divided loyalties at a hundred paces. He was a consummate No. 2, steadfast and discreet, who eagerly handled whatever Baker preferred to ignore or avoid. He oversaw messy subjects like aid to Eastern Europe, ran the bureaucracy, appeared before Congress when Baker sensed trouble, all without complaint. Though he never became part of Baker's innermost circle, he earned his boss's professional respect. "Eagleburger is the best deputy I ever had," Baker recently told some White House officials.
During the Gulf War, Eagleburger hustled to Israel and persuaded the Shamir government not to retaliate against Saddam's Scuds, a key element in holding the coalition together. His let's-have-a-drink-after-w ork relationship with key legislators was an important asset. "He is one of the few foreign-service officers who can enter into the spirit of the heavyweights on the Hill," says an old colleague. But he doesn't slap backs. "When Baker calls, it's for politics," says a Hill aide. "When Larry calls, it's for substance. That's his star quality up here: because people think of him as intellectual titanium, he makes members feel glad to be a member of his club, not that he's part of theirs."