The President’s Brain Trust

JAMES A. BAKER III

White House chief of staff James A. Baker III has ties to Bush that go back to the early 1960s when the two Houstonians were first getting involved in politics. He ran Bush’s 1968 congressional campaign, and has been at or near the helm of every Republican presidential campaign since 1976. He managed Bush’s unsuccessful 1980 chase of the Republican presidential nomination, and served as Ronald Reagan’s first White House chief of staff, as Reagan’s second Treasury secretary, and as secretary of state in the Bush Administration. In August, the President called him back to the White House to take supreme command of the White House staff and the reelection campaign. He is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Texas Law School, and practiced law in Houston. Baker is 62.

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ROBERT M. TEETER

Campaign director Robert M. Teeter was Bush’s chief polltaker in 1988, and became involved in politics when, at age 25, he was an assistant sergeant at arms at the Republican National Convention that nominated Barry Goldwater. A graduate of Albion College in Michigan, where he served as an instructor, and the holder of a master’s degree from Michigan State University, Teeter held various management positions with Market Opinion Research of Detroit. In 1989, he became president of Coldwater Corp., a political consulting company in Michigan. He is 53 years old.

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RICHARD G. DARMAN

For more than 20 years, Richard G. Darman has been moving up the Washington ladder, beginning as a deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1971. Serving in each Republican Administration since then, he became deputy Treasury secretary under Baker and rose to his current post, director of the Office of Management and Budget, at the start of the Bush Administration. It was as an aide to Baker, then White House chief of staff in the early years of the Reagan presidency, that Darman began exercising close control over policy, serving, in effect, as the gatekeeper who controlled the flow of paper into the Oval Office. Darman is one of the few senior Administration officials to have survived the twists and turns in the Bush White House over the last four years. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. Darman is 49.

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MARY MATALIN

Campaign political director and deputy campaign manager Mary Matalin began political work in 1980, in an Illinois Senate race. She worked in the Republican National Committee’s voter education operation in 1981, then held various other Republican Party staff jobs. In Bush’s 1988 campaign, she was the Midwest field coordinator. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Western Illinois University and attended Hofstra School of Law. She is in a “suspended” relationship with senior Clinton adviser James Carville. She is 39 years old.

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ROBERT B. ZOELLICK

Robert B. Zoellick moved to the White House as deputy chief of staff when Baker was called back from the State Department. He has been tied to Baker or Darman in a professional and political capacity since 1985. Zoellick, something of a trouble-shooter for Baker at the State Department, was plunged into the nitty gritty of developing domestic policy in the final two months of the campaign, and immediately began turning out new programs. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School. Zoellick is 39.