Who's Jim Baker?

Odd, that may sound. But to all the 20-somethings out there who rely on blogs, attitude and Jon Stewart to shape their political views, a 76-year-old former secretary of state may seem really outdated.

You can forget that. In fact, politics needs more James Bakers, not fewer of them.

From 1976 to 1992, James A. Baker III managed five presidential campaigns, ran Ronald Reagan's White House and served as secretary of treasury and secretary of state. You can stack that resume up against anyone's in politics over the last 50 years. It's also a big reason Congress asked him to chair a bipartisan study group to consider other options for Iraq.

Now, out promoting his autobiography, "Work Hard, Study . . . and Keep Out of Politics!," Baker stopped by the Dallas Morning News on Monday for an interview.

Yes, his hair is whiter and his cheeks ruddier, but the Houston attorney's approach to politics and diplomacy still stand out. Even if you don't agree with all his conclusions, which I don't. In our interview, for instance, he struck me as not fully appreciating how religion has become its own force in reorganizing the world.

What matters about James Baker is that he can cross boundaries. Washington has boiled down to a game of us against them. You stay in your tribe and don't go much beyond it. To some extent, so have world affairs.

Jim Baker crosses boundary lines, all the while remaining a conservative Republican. As he said in our 45-minute conversation, he met more than a dozen times with Syria during the first Gulf War. That's right. Syria. Hafez Assad, a really bad guy. And the work paid off.

"I made 15 trips to Damascus, and on the 16th trip I got the Syrians to change 25 years of policy and come sit at the table and talk peace with Israel," he recalled. "Thereby, implicitly recognizing Israel's right to exist."

The same negotiating skill paid off in domestic politics. As one of many examples, he helped sell Ronald Reagan's tax cuts and budget package to Republicans and Democrats in 1981. I worked on Capitol Hill at the time, and that was really a hard sale. The effort required intense negotiations with conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans.

Later, he pivoted as George H.W. Bush's secretary of state to get the Nicaraguan contra uproar off the foreign agenda. That way, the United States could get onto the much more serious business of managing the collapse of communism.

To me, the period between 1989 and 1991 was one of the most pivotal in recent times. As we walked to his car Monday, he elaborated upon how those years marked the end of communism and the beginning of turmoil in Iraq. Not since the 1940s, when World War II concluded and the Cold War started, has the world gone through such an ending and beginning at once.

In his book, the Republican expresses his concern about America's image in the world. The longtime friend of the Bush family won't say the White House has mangled international relations. Instead, he put it this way: "In the second term, President Bush and Secretary (of State Condoleezza) Rice ... have a major effort to overcome the tensions that flowed out of our invasion of Iraq."

The go-to man in Washington for most of a decade, Baker clearly is not comfortable being known as a fixer. He questioned my premise when I said that whenever there's a big problem, people say, "Send in Jim Baker." His nose kind of scrunched up, and he said, "I don't necessarily subscribe to this Mr. Fix-It stuff."

But he is good at solving problems. And that's why the "Daily Show" crowd should Google "James A. Baker III" and contemplate his achievements.

A family admonition he likes to cite — and used for the title of his book — goes, "Work hard, study...and keep out of politics." It was born out of a Texas aristocratic tradition, where civic-minded lawyers and business people don't get into the dirty world of politics.

Good for us that he broke the family code.