Bobby Baker, who helped make Lyndon Johnson the master of the Senate, dies at 89

Lyndon Johnson (left) giving "The Treatment" to Sen. Richard Russell

Bobby Baker, an influential protégé to Lyndon Johnson who helped him amass power in the Senate and may have helped doom his political career if the Kennedy assassination had not happened first, died last week at the age of 89. Baker arrived in the Senate as a page in 1943 at the age of 14, and he quickly acquired a huge and intimate knowledge of every senator. In 1948, Sen.-elect Johnson sought out Baker. Decades later, Baker recounted Johnson telling him, "Mr. Baker, they tell me you're the smartest son of a bitch over there," and Baker responded, "Well, whoever told you that lied. I know all of the staff on our side. I know who the drunks are. And I know whose word is good."

And indeed, as historian Robert Caro recounts in great detail in "Master of the Senate" (a book we highly recommend), Baker very quickly proved his worth. In 1950, Johnson was appointed as assistant Democratic leader (now known as whip), which was pretty much a useless position at the time. However, Baker helped provide Johnson with the best possible information about which way Democratic senators were leaning on any vote. As one contemporary recounted to Caro, Baker was no "true believer," because he wasn't someone who "just can't help but feel that the issue is so clear on their side that the people must vote that way… Bobby didn't let that kind of consideration affect him, maybe because he didn't have terribly strong convictions himself."

Johnson's whip counts were far better than anything else available, and fellow Democratic senators and the Truman White House came to depend on them. As whip and later as Democratic leader, Johnson utilized Baker to understand where senators actually stood on votes, and what means were needed to bring over reluctant members. Baker later said that after hours senators "let their hair down when they've had a few drinks, tell you their likes and dislikes, and you file it away. You find out who likes to take trips around the world, and then you try to repay those who voted against their conscience to help you. Senator Johnson was very adept at taking care of senators and their wishes, and the bills that they wanted." Baker was close to Johnson throughout his time as leader, and he acquired the nickname "Little Lyndon."

However, while Baker helped Johnson become the most powerful leader of the Senate before or since, he almost led to his political downfall.

In 1963, when Johnson was vice president, a disgruntled former business associate named Ralph Hill filed a lawsuit alleging that Baker had taken thousands from Hill to steer a vending machine contract to his company but had then taken the contract for himself. Baker, it turned out, had created his own vending machine company and had used his influence with government officials to win lucrative contracts, amassing a $2 million fortunate on a Senate salary of less than $20,000 a year.

Baker also attracted attention for co-founding the Quorum Club, where lobbyists and members of Congress would drink and cavort with women. Baker also would say that he directed Ellen Rometsch, a suspected East German spy, towards President John. F. Kennedy. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the president's brother, was worried enough about the rumors that he secretly had Rometsch deported. Baker's financial dealings and other illicit activities got him on the covers of Time and Life and created a headache for Kennedy and especially Johnson—and giving an opening to congressional Republicans, who soon began pushing for an investigation into Baker.

Baker resigned from his Senate post hoping to stop the investigation from spreading, but he was unsuccessful. It's quite possible that Johnson's ties to Baker, as well as other factors, would have gotten the vice president removed from Kennedy's 1964 ticket. However, after Kennedy was murdered in November 1963 and Johnson became president, the Baker matter quickly faded from public view. But Baker's own troubles weren't over at all: In 1967, he was indicted for tax evasion, theft, and fraud, and he later served 16 months in prison. Johnson completely cut ties with the man responsible to a great degree for his rise to power and refused to acknowledge him in any way. Baker visited Johnson just before he died in 1973 and recounted in his memoir (aptly titled, "Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator") that the former president told him, "Everything within me wanted to come to your aid. But they would have crucified me."

In 2009 and 2010, Baker spoke to the Senate Historical Office about his experiences in D.C. As Todd Purdum would write for Politico, the "manuscript was so ribald and riveting, so salacious and sensational, that the Historical Office refrained from its usual practice of posting such interviews online." Luckily for history, Purdum would publish Baker's most vivid recollections.

P.S: And if you haven’t read them, we again cannot recommend Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson series highly enough.