On August 4, the Sippican Historical will host Chris Black and B. Jay Cooper, who will discuss their new book, Mac Baldrige: The Cowboy in Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet. The book recounts the Washington career of Mac Baldrige, the Commerce Secretary during the Reagan Administration. Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency at a time when Japan and Europe, fully recovered from wartime devastation, threatened America’s position as the number one economy in the world. Manufacturing was in decline; traditional industries were being beaten by foreign competitors; many American industries had grown complacent. President Reagan named Mac Baldrige, an industrialist (and card-carrying member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association), to his cabinet in order to address these economic challenges. Mac Baldrige was a pragmatist, not an ideologue. He advocated a middle ground between the close-the-borders rhetoric of the protectionists and the unfettered free-for-all preferred by some business interests. He called it “fair trade” and it became the official policy of the Reagan Administration. Baldrige led a billion dollar company prior to his appointment to the cabinet and once famously complained that corporate America had grown “fat, dumb and happy.” This book recalls an era when Democrats and Republicans were social friends despite their philosophical differences and compromise was the mark of a shrewd and skillful leader. It also recounts the Washington career of an American original during the era still celebrated by its supporters as “morning in America.”
Chris Black is a longtime journalist and writer. She was a political reporter for more than 30 years and worked at the Boston Globe and as a White House and Congressional Correspondent for Cable Network News (CNN). She now writes and ghost writes books in a variety of genres. B. Jay Cooper served as Mac Baldrige’s speechwriter and director of public affairs at the Commerce Department. He also is a former deputy press secretary to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush; former director of communications at the Republican National Committee and a former spokesman and communications director at Yale University. Cooper met Baldrige while covering him as a reporter in Waterbury, Connecticut, and was asked by Baldrige to come to Washington to work with him. Mac Baldrige: The Cowboy in Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet is their first collaboration as a married couple. They live on a tidal river in Marion, Massachusetts.