Friends and admirers of President Bush might grab hold of a new yardstick for measuring future White House ventures at home and abroad.
In the aftermath of Bush`s tragicomic foray to the Far East (and with an election year commencing), they should observe this simple rule of thumb: If James A. Baker III isn`t in the picture, assume the worst.
The secretary of state stayed away from the business-class junket to Japan that ended last week, the one in which the president piped aboard a gaggle of irate American executives to confront our reluctant trading partners in the Orient.
The trip did not invite comparison with, say, Richard Nixon in China.
Bush got sick, the execs got nowhere, the Japanese said the president looked like a car salesman, the execs got their swollen salaries published in a host of newspapers, and there aren`t likely to be many ”jobs, jobs, jobs” as a result of the negotiations.
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A host of Cabinet-level luminaries joined Bush on the Japan trip, but Baker kept his distance, working on Mideast peace talks that have garnered few headlines but done no harm.
From his earliest days on the national scene, Baker has demonstrated an uncanny instinct for avoiding the public-relations grinder.
As White House chief of staff during Ronald Reagan`s first term, Baker ran a seamless operation that kept his boss and himself out of harm`s way.
When the bad news began seeping into the Oval Office in the second term-the Iran-contra mess, the problems with Atty. Gen. Ed Meese and other administration bigwigs-Baker was already in another building, serving as secretary of the Treasury.
Did you recall that Baker was Treasury secretary about the time the savings and loan fiasco was shaping up? Have you ever heard the name James A. Baker III linked to the S&L collapse?
Four years ago, Baker assumed the role of campaign chairman of the Bush campaign and, along with Lee Atwater, orchestrated a brutally effective effort that overwhelmed Democrat Michael Dukakis.
From there, it was on to the State Department and a high-profile role in negotiations with the collapsing Soviet Union, the republics and the nations of Eastern Europe.
Baker held back a step or two on the Persian Gulf war, and when the coalition forces swept through Kuwait, the plaudits went to Bush, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Then again, the victory in the gulf feels a trifle hollow these days, what with Saddam Hussein still in Baghdad, so perhaps Baker kept his record intact.
That`s why a long-awaited seven-part series running in The Washington Post on Vice President Dan Quayle, the man and the golfer, provided such amusing reading last week.
You`ll find no far-reaching assessment of the Post`s work in this corner except to say that during a discussion of Quayle`s difficulties during the 1988 campaign, the vice president and his wife, Marilyn, tried to hang responsibility for Quayle`s debate fiasco and some other gaffes on Baker.
The simultaneous high point and low point of the vice presidential debate, you`ll recall, came when Quayle compared himself to a youthful John F. Kennedy, a comparison he`d been warned not to make.
Quayle didn`t take the advice and was seen staring off into the middle distance as his Democratic opponent, Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, delivered his memorable putdown.
”Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine,” the Texan said. ”Senator, you`re no Jack Kennedy.”
The way the Quayles tell it, Baker and company should have been out front telling the press that Bentsen hadn`t throttled Quayle, that the smiling Hoosier had emerged victorious.
”People in our party . . . Jim Baker, who`s a very good friend . . . they`re not very good spin doctors,” Marilyn Quayle told the Post. ”It was really handled badly.”
To say that Baker is not a very good spin doctor is a little like saying Michael Jordan can`t hit the jump shot or that Madonna hates publicity.
James A. Baker III gets better press than Mother Teresa. James A. Baker III skipped the Japan trip. James A. Baker III gets the newspapers to call him James A. Baker III.
And here`s yet another reason for Dan and Marilyn Quayle-and George Bush- to worry. Thus far, James A. Baker III has no assigned role in the 1992 Bush-Quayle campaign.