ShareThisBy BARRY McKENNA
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
James Baker has been the go-to guy for four consecutive Republican presidents, dating back to Gerald Ford.
He's done it all, from secretary of state to party bagman, and just about everything in between. He's run election campaigns, raised heaps of cash and served as an international emissary. During the 2000 Florida recount mess, Baker led the legal and PR machine that salvaged George W. Bush's sullied victory.
All eyes are again on Baker as he looks for a way out of the Iraq mess for the United States. He heads the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which has been quietly studying options for Iraq, with the blessing of the White House and funding from Congress.
At 76, the tall and courtly Texan may be on his final big presidential assignment,
When the panel was created in March, many critics dismissed the effort as a sop to Republicans in Congress who had grown concerned about the political fallout from the growing chaos in Iraq.
But the sweeping victory by the Democrats in Tuesday's midterm election and the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has suddenly vaulted the work of the group to center stage. Rumsfeld's nominated successor at the Pentagon, Robert Gates, is one of the blue-ribbon panel's members.
The group is expected to issue its recommendations in late December or early January. And according to published reports, the panel's proposals could include a call for a rapprochement with Iran and Syria, an international conference on Iraq, a concentration on stability rather than democracy in Iraq, as well as a timetable for slowly pulling out the roughly 140,000 U.S. troops in the country.
The panel is believed to be looking at a wide range of options, and only one, staying the course, is apparently off the table. Baker could recommend partition of Iraq, sending more troops, pulling out immediately, drawing down troops gradually and giving the Shia-dominated Iraqi government a deadline to make peace with Sunnis.
Those options remain highly controversial. And President Bush continues to insist that the kind of pullout advocated by many Democrats would be a disaster.
Baker has become the "knight in shining armour" for Republicans and Democrats alike and, for Bush, perhaps a cover to change the course of a deeply unpopular war, said James Lindsay, a U.S. foreign-policy expert and director of the Robert S. Strauss Center at the University of Texas.
"Many Democrats, and more than a few Republicans, are hoping that the commission report will create a political cover for the administration to swallow hard, make some tough choices in Iraq and allow everybody to go away happy," Lindsay said.
Bush insists he wants unvarnished advice from Baker. The group, which is interviewing dozens of current and former U.S. officials, top Iraqi leaders, outside experts and influential journalists, is slated to meet with Bush at the White House next week.
The White House has insisted that Baker's panel is completely independent of presidential interference and can make whatever recommendations it wants.
Even in that best-case scenario of bipartisan agreement on a way forward, there's no guarantee of success, Lindsay cautioned.
"As you look at Iraq, it's hard to say there is a really good option," he said. "It's more a matter of choosing among bad options and trying to determine which choice is going to allow you to get out with the least amount of harm and damage."
