James Baker talks 25 years of his namesake institute
Former statesman touts achievements via nonpartisan collaborations
Though James Baker’s work has taken him all around the world and particularly to Washington, he’s always been connected to Houston, where his family has roots that go back more than 160 years.
Baker, 88, grew up adjacent to where the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is today, before finding his way to Washington and beyond. He’s best known for his tenure in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, where he was chief of staff to both and secretary of treasury for one and secretary of state for the other. After George H.W. Bush lost his re-election bid, Baker was a man without a job, which is when Rice University came calling.
So Baker started work at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, a think tank far removed from Washington, D.C. The Baker Institute celebrated its 25th anniversary with a gala last week featuring President Barack Obama. Beforehand, Baker fielded a few questions about his life and work.
Q: The institute works in a long-tail format in a world that wants instant change. But clearly you feel it plays a part in presenting history as alive. That points in history aren’t isolated but rather the result of what came before and impactful on what happens next.
A: Somebody said that those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat history. But I’ll tell you, we really succeeded beyond our wildest dreams here. I had no idea we could ever be where we are when we started this institute. To be ranked No. 2 among all energy think tanks in the world, and No. 4 in the world among university-affiliated think tanks, it’s remarkable. And what makes me proud is that we’re strictly non-partisan. Look around the walls here and you see Democrats and Republicans. And frankly it would be good if our dysfunctional political system could get back to being more civil with each other and more willing to compromise to get things done. That’s the way our democracy works. If you want to get something through Congress that will be lasting you have to be willing to compromise.
Q: You’re surrounded by smart people here with ideas and research. Do they make you think it can be fixed?
A: It was done. It was sure done when I worked for Ford, Reagan and Bush. We had a Democratic Congress. There are a lot of reasons for (current political dysfunction) … Redistricting, evenly divided red and blue states. The press becoming players. That’s not a good thing. If you listen to Fox TV, you’d think you were listening to an arm of the Republican Party, and MSNBC you’d think you were listening to an arm of the Democratic Party. That’s bad for democracy. In a democracy, one side never gets to make all the rules. We need to send leaders to Washington who understand that. And we need to find a way for our elected leaders in Washington to do what they used to do, socialize across party lines. Now a congressman or congresswoman goes there and the work week is Tuesday afternoon to Thursday afternoon. The rest of the time is going home to raise money. They don’t bring their families and there’s no socializing across party lines. That’s no good. And I don’t know if we can get out of it now. I used to think if one party controlled all levers of power — the House, Senate and White House — we could get out of it. But we haven’t. And Obama controlled things that way for two years. They didn’t get out of it. So I don’t know. But it’s not good for the country.
Q: There’s a letter you wrote in the lobby of the institute. You were expressing excitement over the opening of the actual Baker Institute building but also mourning the fact that Houston had just been deluged by a storm. I know there’s an institute program about flooding. But the hyper-regional focus also feels like it was a big part of what you were trying to do here.
A: Wow, really? I don’t remember that letter. But yes, we’d had floods. Still having them. Of course, I’m a Republican, so you won’t be surprised to hear me say I was unhappy to see (county judge) Ed Emmett turned out because of straight-ticket voting. He was good on flooding. He was good, and he was going to be better. And he enjoyed a stature and status that I think permitted him to be that way. He wasn’t a politician first. He was a public servant first.
Q: He’s proof that elected officials aren’t afforded the time for a long-view approach the way the institute is. You’re allowed time to let a study run its course.
A: We are. And our scholarship is valued by a lot of policy makers. We see that. And that’s one of the interesting things with respect to President Obama. Obama called on me two or three times during his presidency for advice. We don’t do enough of that anymore. We don’t call on our Democratic opponents when we’re in power. We need a broader approach to these problems.
Q: I talked to people in the mayor’s office about Dr. Quianta Moore’s studies about children and how they affect flood relief. This work certainly has broader value around the world, but after Hurricane Harvey, it feels very local. You had some global goals initially, but you also looked in your backyard when you started this.
A: Yes, we’ve done both. We debated that when we first started the institute, to concentrate on one area or another. We decided we wouldn’t. There might come a time when we find a particular niche, but so far that hasn’t happened. I had been privileged to be the treasure secretary for four years, chief of staff for two presidents over four years. So treasury, there’s economics. Secretary of state, there’s foreign policy. So that was the start, it’s almost everything we were interested in except for health care, which we should’ve been interested in because it’s across the street at the Medical Center.
Q: And other things arise. Like immigration.
A: That’s really important to Texas. It’s important to the U.S. We are a country of immigrants. We have succeeded because of immigrants. (Holds up finger.) But legal immigration. Not illegal. People wanting to come in legally ought not to have others jump in line in front of them. We should continue an expansive broad-based policy of legal immigration. It’s important to our economy.
Q: Edward Djerejian (the institute’s director) said you were responsible for starting a program about elections two years ago. With all the data available, I think most people didn’t see it as a plausible outcome.
A: Yes. (Laughs.) Nobody really saw the extent to which social media would drive voting intentions. When I was running campaigns — I ran five — you tuned in every night to the nightly news: CBS, ABC, NBC. They set the story lines that drove voting intentions. No longer. And people understand that now, but they came to it late. Frankly, that’s what happened to Hillary’s campaign, at least in part. She should have won that campaign. Everybody thought she would, including, in my opinion, Donald Trump.
Q: So your grandfather, the Captain ...
A: The Captain! Want me to tell you something about the Captain? Q: Yes, please.
A: Captain Baker was a captain in the Houston Light Guard, a social organization. My father was a captain in infantry during World War I. He fought in the trenches and was decorated. I was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. Fortunately I didn’t have to fight. But my dad was a captain, and I was a captain and my grandfather was an ersatz captain. But he’s the one they always call Captain Baker. My dad is the one they should call Captain Baker. But, yes, I have deep roots here, Andrew. My mother moved here when there were 35,000 people here. My great grandfather moved here and was one of the partners in Baker Botts, and we think our law firm is the oldest continually operated business in Texas, started in 1840 in the law office of Peter Gray. So our roots are deep, and I’m so proud of this city. I worry we’re building ourselves into a less than ideal lifestyle with all these high rise apartments, accepting more and more people. People being here isn’t the problem, but we have to build infrastructure for them. That’s why we have traffic problems. You think it’s bad now, you’re a young man. It’s going to be worse.