Howard Baker

The Tennessee Republican's question on the Watergate committee, 'What did the president know, and when did he know it?', made his reputation for putting institution before party. As Senate majority leader from 1981 he brokered Reagan's budget and tax deals with Democrats, and he was crucial to ratifying the Panama Canal treaties for Carter in 1978 as minority leader, at a cost to his own presidential ambitions. Later, as Reagan's chief of staff, he helped stabilise the White House after Iran-Contra.