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One of the '88 campaign's most important operations -- the debates with , Dukakis -- reflects Baker's acumen. The first goal, as usual, was getting the edge. Paul Brountas, a prominent Boston attorney and the Dukakis campaign's chairman, was the Democrats' lead debate negotiator. Brountas doesn't have a particularly large ego, but complimenting him can be like throwing gasoline on a fire. "Baker realized he could woo Brountas, and did so masterfully," says Thomas Donilon, then a Dukakis aide. "We were the kids, Baker told Paul, while he and Brountas were megalawyers with a code of honor that transcended the nastiness of mere politics. Paul ate it up."
Then Baker convinced Brountas that Bush was perfectly happy not to have any debates at all -- which was never the G.O.P.'s real position. "Once Paul bought that," says Donilon, "the concessions flowed. Any chance we may have had to have Bush and Dukakis actually question each other without a panel was gone." Recalling how he snookered Brountas, Baker smiles. "Let's just say that whatever edge they thought they had, they convinced themselves they didn't have it."
Incredibly, Brountas still believes Baker is a straight shooter. "Baker's absolutely the best I've ever seen at not making enemies," says Robert Strauss, the Democratic elder, who is one of Baker's closest personal friends. "It's not for nothing that he's called 'the Velvet Hammer.' " Of those Baker has crossed, few are willing to say anything negative on the record. One who does is Hugh Gregg, the former New Hampshire Governor who ran that state's operation for Bush in 1980. "Jimmy is a consummate pragmatist and a very tough pol," says Gregg. "But he'll stomp on anyone in his way, even a friend. Probe a bit, and you'll find that he doesn't really have much compassion for people."
Baker is a scion of one of Houston's most famous families. His great- grandfather and grandfather were prominent lawyers and financiers. His father, called "the Warden" by Jimmy's friends, was a strict disciplinarian. Baker recalls frequent whippings, and his father often awakened him by throwing cold water in his face. "Gets you up real fast," says the Secretary of State.
Following his father, Baker attended the Hill School and Princeton. No one recalls him being a grind, and everyone remembers a fair amount of hell raising. But Baker did manage a 150-page Princeton history-department thesis glorifying the career of Ernest Bevin, a British Labor Party Foreign Secretary who was as thick with his boss, Clement Attlee, as Baker is with Bush. Of the many attributes that intrigued Baker about Bevin, he most admired those that others now see in him. Bevin was an "expert negotiator," wrote Baker in 1952. "((He)) never became lost in the idealistic. He was always very practical." What Bevin always sought, said Baker, was "concrete advantage."
After Princeton, Baker married, served two years in the Marine Corps and then went home to Texas for law school. His father insisted that he join an undergraduate fraternity and Baker complied. The hazing, which included carrying a dead fish around his neck for a week, was humiliating for a father and former Marine lieutenant. "It's absolutely incredible that he did that," says Susan Baker. "I would have said, 'See you later, Pop.' "