2010-Jan-24 - Wildcatter Was Influential Commerce Secretary |
| As commerce secretary, Mr. Mosbacher, who died Sunday at age 82, laid the groundwork for the North puma sneakers American Free Trade Agreement. As Mr. Bush's most important fund-raiser, he worked on every Bush campaign from 1964, when Mr. Bush lost his first Senate race. "Together we shared a journey that led to the presidency, the mountaintop of American politics," Mr. Bush said Sunday in a statement. It was Mr. Mosbacher who, along with another old Houston friend, James Baker III, persuaded Mr. Bush to drop out of the 1980 election in time to be considered for the vice-presidential slot on the Reagan ticket. When it came time for Mr. Bush to be president, his new cabinet included Mr. Baker as secretary of state and Mr. Mosbacher as secretary of commerce, and had a strong whiff of what some called the "Texas Raj"—influential Texans with educational and financial ties to East Coast elites. Born in 1927 in Mount Vernon, N.Y., Mr. Mosbacher was the son of Emil Mosbacher, a wealthy investor who had started as a runner at the New York Curb Agency, which would later become the American Stock Exchange. Emil Mosbacher cashed out most of his investments before the crash of 1929 and Robert Mosbacher had an affluent puma boots childhood, growing up in homes on Park Avenue in Manhattan and in suburban White Plains and attendinged the exclusive Choate School in Connecticut. Starting in Long Island Sound, Mr. Mosbacher together with his brother Bus (actually Emil Jr.) became top American sailors. Staked to a half-million dollars in investment capital from his father, Mr. Mosbacher headed for Texas, where he became a successful oil wildcatter. His Mosbacher Energy Co. was one of the nation's largest privately owned drillers. Handsome and athletic, Mr. Mosbacher was a Bush tennis partner, and later the two invested together in a barge business. Mr. Mosbacher's political ties grew wider as he helped revivify a nearly broke presidential campaign of Gerald Ford in 1976. Later, he would play an important role raising money for John McCain's 2008 presidential bid. Among the salient issues at Commerce were the early development of high-definition television and the export of technology that had the potential for dual use in defense and civilian industries. It was Mr. Mosbacher who took the politically divisive decision not to adjust 1990 census figures to account for individuals puma tennis shoes that were missed.As an old friend of the president, he wielded substantial influence in Washington. "At cabinet meetings, he's like the 800-pound gorilla," a senior official in the Reagan administration told The Wall Street Journal in 1989. "He can sit where he wants." |
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