Baker, former U.S. senator, dies

WASHINGTON – Former Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr., who cut to the core of the 1973 Watergate hearings when he asked, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” has died. He was 88.

He died Thursday as a result of complications from a stroke suffered Saturday, according to an email distributed at the law firm where Baker was senior counsel.

The scion of a political family, Baker served 18 years in the Senate, winning respect from both Republicans and Democrats. But it was his instantly famous question during those Senate hearings about what President Richard Nixon knew that made him an enduring household name. It instantly focused the nation’s attention on the cover-up that perhaps more than the Watergate break-in itself eventually brought down Nixon’s presidency.

Watergate, though it brought Baker national recognition, marked “the greatest disillusionment” of his political career, Baker told the Associated Press in 1992.

“I believed that it was a political ploy of the Democrats, that it would come to nothing,” said Baker, who had seconded Richard Nixon’s nomination at the 1968 Republican convention. “But a few weeks into that, it began to dawn on me that there was more to it than I thought, and more to it than I liked.”

He said he always considered his time as Senate majority leader, 1981 to 1985, the high point of his political career.

Baker also played a key role in passage of legislation synonymous with the “Reagan Revolution”: major tax and spending cuts combined with a military buildup.

He left the Senate with an eye to another presidential bid in 1988, but instead served as chief of staff for Reagan’s White House in 1987-88.