Remember Howard?

Since leaving the Senate in January, Howard Baker has been decompressing at the Washington office of Vinson & Elkins, where his salary this year will hit seven figures. Baker quit the Senate to seek the Presidency, and is confident he made the right choice. “Had I resigned in ’79,” Baker told me, “I could have been nominated. You cannot run for President and do anything else.”

Eighteen years in the Senate (including four as Minority Leader, four as Majority Leader) have seasoned the 59-year-old Tennessee Republican. Although he is a trifle pudgy in frame (he flares if twitted about this), his mind is lean and his spirit relaxed. There is scarcely a public-policy issue that he cannot speak to, whether domestic or foreign, drawing on his vast knowledge and experience. But, in another sense, the 18 years have taken their toll. Baker has the “senatorial mindset”: that deal-making folksiness that is great in an arbitrator, but deadly in a leader. The hard edge is not yet there, nor the when-to-polarize instinct. But that may be changing.

JM

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John McLaughlin

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Presidential Election

Since leaving the Senate in January, Howard Baker has been decompressing at the Washington office of Vinson & Elkins, where his salary this year will hit seven figures. Baker quit the Senate to seek the Presidency, and is confident he made the right choice. “Had I resigned in ’79,” Baker told me, “I could have been nominated. You cannot run for President and do anything else.”

Eighteen years in the Senate (including four as Minority Leader, four as Majority Leader) have seasoned the 59-year-old Tennessee Republican. Although he is a trifle pudgy in frame (he flares if twitted about this), his mind is lean and his spirit relaxed. There is scarcely a public-policy issue that he cannot speak to, whether domestic or foreign, drawing on his vast knowledge and experience. But, in another sense, the 18 years have taken their toll. Baker has the “senatorial mindset”: that deal-making folksiness that is great in an arbitrator, but deadly in a leader. The hard edge is not yet there, nor the when-to-polarize instinct. But that may be changing.