Among the many phone calls President Barack Obama made after winning the election in November was one to GOP elder statesman Jim Baker.
Baker, the former White House chief of staff, cabinet secretary and recount consigliere to George W. Bush, said Obama called him only about five days after winning the election. “I was semi-shocked,” Baker told an American Hospital Association convention Monday. “I said, ‘Mr. President-elect, you ran an extraordinary campaign. And I ought to know, because I’ve run them.’”
He said Obama admitted he had once told his staff, “Let’s win this one big because I don’t want those Republicans to hire Jim Baker to go steal the election.”
Baker’s verdict on the new president: He’s an “extraordinarily good communicator [and] he has a sense of humor.”
