Robert S. Strauss, Presidential Confidant and Deal Maker

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Robert S. Strauss with his boss, President Jimmy Carter, after a signing ceremony for the Trade Act of 1979, which Mr. Strauss pushed as the special representative for trade negotiations. Credit Dennis Cook/Associated Press 

 

Robert S. Strauss, who rose from the Texas Plains to become an influential Washington insider, leading the Democratic Party and hopscotching among White House posts when not making millions as a lobbyist and deal maker, died Wednesday. He was 95.

His law firm, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, confirmed his death.

Mr. Strauss was known for a quick wit and a rough-hewn persuasiveness that recalled his small-town roots and enhanced his prowess among a vanishing breed of back-room power brokers. His knowledge, contacts and instincts — running across parties and administrations — ran so deep that he was almost invariably included in the tiny, powerful fraternity known as Washington’s “wise men.” He called himself a “centrist, a worker, a doer, a putter-together.”

It was Mr. Strauss whom Nancy Reagan asked to tell her husband, President Ronald Reagan, that the Iran-contra arms-for-hostages scandal was corroding his administration and that he had to make changes. It was Mr. Strauss whom President George Bush in 1991 appointed ambassador to the Soviet Union, even after he told the president that he had never voted for him for anything. Mr. Strauss became ambassador to the newly non-Communist Russian Federation.

Bob Woodward wrote in his book “Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate” (1999) that when some Republican leaders in the House of Representatives were having second thoughts about impeaching President Bill Clinton, they turned to Mr. Strauss to ask other Republican leaders to consider censure instead.

Through the law firm he co-founded — Akin, Gump — Mr. Strauss deftly navigated the territory where business and government intersect and deals are made. Over Thanksgiving dinner in 1990 at the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan, he brokered final details of Matsushita Electric’s takeover of MCA for $6.6 billion. His reported $8 million fee was split between both sides, because he had represented both.

If anything, that  typifies his ilk (for better and for worse).

In April 1979 Mr. Strauss became Mr. Carter’s personal representative to the Middle East peace talks, which then concerned Palestinian autonomy in the Israeli-occupied territories. Years later, speaking to The Los Angeles Times, an unidentified friend quoted Mr. Strauss’s response to getting the assignment.

“The first thing I’m going to do is go to Israel and court Premier Begin’s wife like she was an 18-year-old schoolgirl,” Mr. Strauss said, according to the friend, referring to Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

“Then I’ll go to Egypt and court Sadat’s wife the same way,” he continued, referring to President Anwar el-Sadat. Before long, Mr. Strauss predicted, “one of those ladies is going to turn around in bed to her husband and say: ‘You know, that little Bobby Strauss is not such a bad guy. Why don’t you do something nice for him?’ ”