Baker receives Dole Leadership Prize

Monday, April 23, 2007

From his involvement on the Senate Watergate Committee to his early love for photography, former Tennessee Senator Howard Baker didn’t have a shortage of stories to tell Sunday night at the Lied Center when he received the 2007 Dole Leadership Prize.

Photo by Jon Goering

Bill Lacy, director of the Dole Institute of Politics, talks with former U.S. Senator Howard Baker Sunday night at the Lied Center. Baker was presented with the 2007 Dole Leadership Prize.

Baker, who is now married to former Kansas Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker, was famously quoted saying “What did the President know and when did he know it?” while he was vice chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee.

“I still sort of thought it was essentially a political concern and did not have great substance to it,” he said about the Watergate scandal. “Every day it went on, I found there were forces there I did not understand.”

Four Dole Leadership Prizes have been awarded by the Dole Institute of Politics to such politicians as former New York City Mayor Rudi Giuliani and former U.S. Senator George McGovern. With the prize, Baker also received $25,000, which he is giving to the Landon Center on Aging at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Baker, a native Tennessean, served as Senate majority leader and then Senate minority leader from 1977 to 1985. He was also the U.S. ambassador to Japan from 2001 to 2005, and said that a good relationship between the United States and Japan was essential to “preserve stability in the Far East.”

Baker’s storytelling during the award presentation included tales of his first date with Senator Kassebaum Baker, where he put on his “best blue suit” and took her out to dinner. He also noted his passion for photography, something that started in the Boy Scouts of America “as soon as I discovered I wasn’t good at tying knots,” he said.

Baker said the photographs he has taken are, “the nearest thing I have to a diary.”

Bill Lacy, director of the Dole Institute of Politics, said the Dole Leadership Prize was given to an individual with a long career in public service and encourage people to think positively about politics.

pullquote

I still sort of thought it was essentially a political concern and did not have great substance to it. Every day it went on, I found there were forces there I did not understand.

-former Tennessee Senator Howard Baker

“Politicians that serve the nation best have strong principles they stick to,” Lacy said. “But don’t let those principles get in the way of the civil discussion of issues.”

Baker was named White House chief of staff in 1987 by President Reagan during the Iran-Contra Affair, a time Baker said “was not the not the high point of the Reagan presidency.” Lacy said Baker’s role as White House chief of staff essentially allowed Reagan to salvage his presidency.

Baker said one of his proudest accomplishments was injecting bipartisan relations in the senate.

“I have no recommendations for anybody else to serve 18 years,” Baker said. “In my case, that’s long enough.”

Kansan staff writer Brian Lewis-Jones can be contacted at bljones@kansan.com.

— Edited by Lisa Tilson

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