Robert Schwarz Strauss (October 19, 1918 – March 19, 2014) was an influential figure in American politics, diplomacy, and law whose service dated back to future President Lyndon Johnson's first congressional campaign in 1937.

Strauss was inducted into the Academy of Achievement[3][4] in 2003 and was a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian award, on January 16, 1981.

Still interested in a political career, Strauss and his wife, Helen Jacobs, found a more comfortable niche participating in numerous charities and community activities.

By the 1950s, Strauss's law school friend, John Connally, was serving on the staff of Lyndon Johnson, who soon became Senate Majority Leader.

Connally's election finally brought Strauss the access to the Dallas business establishment that he had long sought.

The 1968 presidential election brought the Republican Richard Nixon to power and left the Democratic Party deeply divided.

Strauss had long expected that his friend, Connally, would run for president and hoped that he would seek the Democratic nomination in the next election.

While remaining studiously neutral in the struggle for the nomination, Strauss carefully rebuilt the party's finances and planned a tightly disciplined national convention in New York City to erase memories of the chaotic gatherings of 1968 and 1972.

By the time the Democrats met at Madison Square Garden, the nomination had been secured by an unexpected candidate, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

At the 1972 convention, party infighting had delayed candidate McGovern's acceptance speech until late at night, when the television audience had gone to sleep.

Strauss made sure that Carter's acceptance speech ran in prime time, and the convention ended with a memorable tableau: the leaders of the party's opposing wings, conservative George Wallace and liberal George McGovern, flanking Carter with clasped hands upraised.

The position enjoyed cabinet-level status while allowing Strauss to apply his considerable negotiating skills to America's troubled relations with its trading partners.

On April 24, 1979, Carter announced that Strauss would serve as Personal Representative of the President to the Middle East Peace Negotiations (Palestinian autonomy talks).

[12] The Iranian Revolution led to the seizure of American diplomats as hostages, a crisis that dominated the last year of Carter's term.

Many of the president's supporters believed that the aggressive management style of his White House Chief of Staff, Donald Regan, was making matters worse.

Strauss, who had closely observed the workings of two other presidential administrations, told Reagan the painful truth: Regan had become a liability and that the White House needed a Chief of Staff who could mend fences, especially with Congress.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was attempting to reform the country's communist system and to forge a new relationship with the United States.

His efforts faced opposition from hard-liners within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and newly elected leaders who agitated for more and more autonomy.

The Soviet Union was also starting to transition from a dictatorship to a democracy, making it important to show that party membership should no longer be a requirement for political office and that political opposition should no longer be considered treasonous but, to use a British term, "the loyal opposition," making Bush's selection of one of his opponents especially significant.

[13] In August 1991, only weeks after a state visit by President Bush, reactionary members of the Communist Party and a few high-ranking officers of the military and KGB attempted to seize power and restore the old dictatorship.

While Strauss served in Moscow, the first elected President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, emerged as the most powerful figure in the fragile union.

With the agreement of the elected presidents of the other constituent republics, the Soviet Union was officially dissolved and replaced by a loosely associated Commonwealth of Independent States.

Strauss resigned shortly after the 1992 presidential election in the United States and returned to private law practice with Akin Gump.

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