booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

Chapter 17: The Tin Man
Walter Mondale, the former vice president, got the job in Japan. Booth’s
consolation prize was Geneva as the U.S. ambassador to the General Agreement on
Tariffs & Trade, which was poised to become
the World Trade Organization. Before long,
Booth would say GATT really stood for the
“Gentlemen’s Agreement to Talk and Talk.”
Since its inception in the wake of World War II,
they’d been talking and talking for round after
round in mind-numbing multilateral minutiae.
It was an important job, or so they said,
but one calculated to make Gardner’s brain
bounce. He couldn’t claim he wasn’t warned.
Senators Slade Gorton and Patty Murray gave
him a rousing bipartisan endorsement when
he appeared before a Senate committee
weighing his confirmation. “His work in our
state was distinguished,” Gorton testified. “He
retired undefeated, untied and unscored upon
Ambassador Gardner. Gardner family album.
as governor and this is not only a wonderful reward for him as a capstone of his career
… I am convinced he will serve the United States in a distinguished and highly successful
fashion.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the erudite committee chairman from New York,
quipped, “May I suggest that sending a person to those 90-hour sessions in Geneva is not
necessarily a reward. We have to find out what he did wrong in some previous life.”
“When I got there they were talking about bananas,” Booth says. “And when I
left they were talking about bananas.” When he got there he was also alone. Geneva is a
beautiful, cosmopolitan city in the heart of central Europe but Jean was the newly elected
president of the Seattle Symphony Board. “That was very important to me,” she says, “and
I felt I needed to be doing something that was important to me.” Seattle and their getaway
on Vashon Island, coupled with their grandchildren’s school activities and sports, held more
attractions than an apartment with a view of Lake Geneva and the Alps. “So we agreed
that I would go over there every so often and he would come here every so often.” Their
marriage was inexorably winding down. Booth began seeing other women. In fact, he met
someone on the plane trip to Europe. Women had always been attracted to him.
He arrived in Switzerland in the winter of 1993. The Uruguay Round of talks,
ongoing since 1986, was giving birth to the World Trade Organization. His boss back at the
White House was U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, a crafty political strategist who
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