The common image of a U.S. Secretary of State is that of Dean Acheson, Cyrus Vance, James Baker -- a suave Wasp lawyer, slender and urbane, who probably rowed at Yale or Princeton. But Lawrence Eagleburger, the new Acting Secretary, looks like the Michelin man with a cane. He once had an exercise bike fitted with a special rack so he could read diplomatic cables; it stood unused so long it was finally removed, and now he's ballooned to more than 250 lbs. He's had a knee-replacement operation, takes steroids for a muscle disorder, and has been spotted with a cigarette in one hand and an asthma inhaler in the other. "One," he bellows into the telephone, then hangs up. His secretary appears bearing a single cigarette from a pack imprisoned in her desk, which he lights with a silver lighter. He claims to have cut from three packs a day to less than half a pack; in the next 90 minutes he smokes three.
But as he takes on the biggest job of his 30 years as a career diplomat, Eagleburger, 62, somehow makes all this work to his advantage. "There is charisma in that funny penguin of a figure," says a veteran congressional aide. His devil-may-care attitude about how he treats his body extends to how he handles his public image, and at least in that regard the result has been astonishingly healthy.
That image is built with simple materials: intelligence and a bluff honesty. "I do not dissemble well," he says, a startling admission for a diplomat. He not only gets away with being direct, but people like him for it. "Many people in the State Department are quietly subversive about policies they don't like but obsequious to their elders and betters," says a longtime colleague. But Eagleburger has swum against that stream: never talking out of school, but glad to raise his voice within it.
Though he's careful enough to avoid saying things that could cause a diplomatic embarrassment, he can be winningly unvarnished. When sent to Capitol Hill to explain Washington's spineless policy toward Iraq prior to its invasion of Kuwait, he admitted, "I'm here to defend the policy. It didn't work. When you've got a policy that didn't work, it's not easy to defend." Says Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz: "He always conveys the impression that he's speaking bluntly and candidly, and that goes a long way."
The result is a lack of pretension rare in Washington, and especially so at Foggy Bottom. Eagleburger avoids using his formal office, with its chandelier, red damask couch and heroic picture of George Washington, because he thinks it looks too much "like a Moroccan house of ill repute." Says his wife Marlene: "He presents the same face to people in Washington that he does to our sons' friends. He's just comfortable in his own skin, and people respond to it."