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On balance, Baker did more for Bush than any White House staffer has ever done for a Vice President -- but that was not necessarily enough. Shortly before Baker left the White House for the Treasury Department in 1985, he made certain that Bush was present at the crucial 9 a.m. meetings with Reagan. When Donald Regan replaced Baker, he figured that Bush's presence came with the territory. "Nobody suggested that to Baker," says a White House aide. "He just did it for his friend. But believe me, as soon as it started, George's first reaction was to wonder why Jimmy hadn't gotten him in there from the start."
No matter its mutually beneficial nature, the Bush-Baker relationship is complicated. But "not really competitive," says Susan Baker. "Jimmy is only really in competition with himself."
Bush and Baker first met in Houston more than 30 years ago. They were a fairly successful tennis duo at the posh Houston Country Club, and when Bush ran unsuccessfully for Congress, Baker's first wife, Mary Stuart, was an around-the-clock volunteer. Later, when Mary Stuart lay dying of cancer in 1970, George and Barbara Bush spent hours at the hospital. Says Vic Gold: "There is just no way to exaggerate the bond created during a crisis like that."
"To give me something to do after Mary Stuart's death," says Baker, "George got me involved in his '70 Senate campaign." "Yeah," says the President, "but it was more selfishness than therapy. I knew Jimmy would help tremendously."
Later, in 1975, Bush persuaded President Ford to name Baker Under Secretary of Commerce. It was then that Baker first learned how to play the inside game. Ford was locked in a struggle for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination with Ronald Reagan. From his perch at Commerce, Baker was trying to help with Southern supporters by persuading the President to take a hard line against textile imports from China. At the same time, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wanted nothing to upset the Chinese.
Ford was scheduled to speak to a group of textile manufacturers in San Francisco on March 26, 1976, and Baker talked him into indicating his willingness to get tough on Chinese textiles. Kissinger's deputies were aghast, and Baker suspected that the Secretary of State would call Air Force One to have the offensive language deleted from the President's speech. Baker arranged to be notified if Kissinger tried such a ploy. When word came, Baker called the plane too. Arguing again for the President's political interests against China's hurt feelings, Baker had the lines reinserted. "A few weeks later," Baker says, "when I met Henry for the first time in a State Department receiving line, he greeted me with one of those looks of his and said, 'Ah, so you are Textile Baker.' "
Baker soon took over management of Ford's losing campaign and brought the President within an eyelash of beating Jimmy Carter. Four years later, the Reaganites tried to recruit Baker for the '80 campaign. But Bush was running, and Baker never hesitated to dance with the man who brung him. Moreover, he ensured Bush's selection as Reagan's Vice President, which wasn't easy. "What I'll admit to, but George never will," said Baker in 1981, "is that the Veep thing was always the fallback. It was always in my mind. That's why, at every opportunity, I had him cool his rhetoric about Reagan."