Jacobson grew up with two younger sisters, and is very proud of the fact that he was the first in his family to go to college. That’s not to say his is a rags-to-riches tale. His grandfather had worked as a janitor in a real estate firm until the top boss noticed his smarts, put him through law school, gave him a job and put him on the path to becoming one of Chicago’s leading real estate attorneys. His mother had been a homemaker, but with her sharp mind, organizational skills and scrupulously labelled shelves in the linen closets, Jacobson is convinced that, had she been born later, “she would have been chairman of the board of Exxon.” His father had served in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War, and later turned a garage-based medicine-cabinet-making business into a successful company. Jacobson spent most of his childhood in the well-heeled Chicago suburb of Highland Park. Both his parents were “very conservative Republicans,” he says. “Don’t ask me why.”
Jacobson set off to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to study political science and economics. “He didn’t realize until he got there that it was not co-ed,” interjects Julie, while the ambassador’s face turns red. As a student, Jacobson worked for the city of Baltimore, getting to know young local politicians who have since risen to powerful positions, such as the Democratic congressman Steny Hoyer, now the majority leader in the House of Representatives, and Ben Cardin, now a senator from Maryland. He earned a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington in 1976 and began practising corporate law in New York City, before his mother became ill with cancer and he moved back to Chicago. What was intended as a temporary move became a three-decade long career with Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP. It was there that he met his wife, then a student at New York University’s law school, who had a summer job with the firm.
The young lawyer quickly earned a reputation as a technology fanatic, and in 1999 was organizing networks for Chicago’s Internet start-ups and nanotechnology companies. “I am a geek,” Jacobson happily admits. “When personal computers first came out, I used to stay up until three or four in the morning with the parts all over the floor, just because I wanted to understand it.” Jeff Lennard, a former law partner, remembers him trying to find ways to use the newest technology in the courtoom. “I remember him designing complex visual graphics to explain how traffic patterns moved in a major rail merger we were opposing. It was hard to visualize and he found ways to use computer graphics in the days before PowerPoint.”
This week, Jacobson and his wife are planning to kick off six weeks of travel across Canada. “I want to meet as many Canadians as I can and try to understand what they really think,” he says. The goal is to visit all 10 provinces by the end of November. They are starting with a trip around Quebec, then heading out to the Prairies for 10 days, followed by a visit to British Columbia before setting out to the Atlantic provinces. “I’m trying to do as much of it as I can on the ground—by car or by train,” he says, recalling a long-ago road trip from New York to Los Angeles during which he “learned more about the United States than in hundreds of times flying over it.” The North may be on the agenda for next summer.
Jacobson has heard Canadian complaints about border “thickening” and wants to see for himself. He notes that U.S. stimulus funding has allocated money for improvements to border infrastructure. “With regard to whether there are other things we can do, I want to reserve judgment,” he says. “ I want to see what it’s like for ordinary people—I’m not sure I will, honestly, because I am the U.S. ambassador—but I want to get as much information as I can. Our goal is not to annoy people, or increase costs, or destroy economies. Our goal is to protect our citizens. I’m going to pay very close attention to see if there are things we can do to improve security or improve convenience. We can probably do both.”
The Jacobsons have a daughter, Wynne, 21, at the University of Colorado, and a son, Jeremy, 20, who is a first-year student at McGill. Julie, who has worked on literacy projects and sat on library boards, is already working on creating a borrowed art collection for the official residence, making use of a U.S. State Department program that enables missions to borrow some of the finest American art from U.S. collections. She says she has fallen in love with Canadian art, and has obtained special permission to create a mixed collection, half-American, half-Canadian. “This is a whole new approach to art in embassies,” says Julie, who has been working with the National Gallery in Ottawa and Chicago’s Art Institute. She has her eye on works by the Group of Seven and Emily Carr, and on American landscape painters, including one particular Georgia O’Keefe painting of Canada. And she was thrilled at the art she saw at Rideau Hall: “Everything there is fantastic.” She envisions turning the residence, with its master chefs and sprawling grounds and majestic views of the Ottawa River, into something of a cultural hub. “There are a lot of Canadian authors I admire. There are a lot of Canadian musicians that I admire,” she says, adding, “One of my greatest goals is to get k.d. lang to our house.”
As for Jacobson’s priorities, he talks in broad terms about his marching orders from the White House. “Trade, energy, border, our respective roles in international affairs and the fact that we stand shoulder to shoulder and to continue that—those are the most important things I will have to address,” he says. “And I am quite confident that there will be things I’ll have to address in the meantime that I can’t fathom yet.”
In the meantime, he may also indulge in the occasional cigar. “I told him I was jealous since now he was moving to Canada he would have an endless supply of Cuban cigars,” says Duane Quaini, former chairman of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, who describes Jacobson as “the best multi-tasker I’ve ever known” and a “happy” person who litigated without resorting to meanness. Quaini is planning to visit the Jacobsons in Ottawa, and says the new ambassador “promised me he’d have Cuban cigars on my arrival.” Asked about this potential breach of the U.S. embargo against the Castro regime, Jacobson demonstrates he’s getting the hang of the ambassador thing. “No comment,” he says.
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