Surging John Kasich and Realist James Baker

James Baker arrives in Kuwait, 1991

Writing in The American Conservative, Scott McConnell tells readers that near the end of a recent event John Kasich was asked who he considered a good secretary of state. Kasich answered Jim Baker.

Scott continues, “Naturally I wondered whether Kasich was really up to date on the symbolic meaning of Jim Baker’s name in Republican foreign policy circles. Baker, who held up loans to Israel that were being used for West Bank settlement expansion, who doubted whether the Israelis were interested in a compromise peace. Baker, the demon figure of the neoconservative imagination, the figure who represented what was most wrong with the presidency of George H.W. Bush. Baker, who for the GOP’s remaining realists, was the symbol—along with Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft—of how a Republican president could be practical and tough-minded in defense of American interests without inflaming the world with futile military interventions… Baker, whose mere appearance on Jeb Bush’s foreign-policy advisory panel reportedly incited a Sheldon Adelson temper tantrum.”