Customer Reviews

Clark Clifford: The Wise Man of Washington

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The story of Clark Clifford is, from some perspectives, a great American story. Humble beginnings, hard work, and especially, making the most of one's opportunities, it is the kind of story we were told by our parents, and which perhaps we tell our children in an effort to inculcate those values which we believe will lead to professional success. Clifford was a 30-something St. Louis lawyer working to build his practice and make partner, when he joined the Navy to serve in World War II. After Truman became president, a friend and client of Clifford's who happened to be Truman's Naval Aide, requested that Clifford come and serve for about a month in the Naval Aide's office in the White House, while Truman was away at the Potsdam Conference. But Clifford made such an impression on the White House staff that he ended up staying in the Truman White House for five years as a top advisor, and subsequently became a renowned (and wealthy) Washington lawyer, an outside advisor to Kennedy, Johnson and Carter, and Johnson's Secretary of Defense in 1968/69 after Robert MacNamara departed. In these capacities, he was a witness to and participant in the development of policies, political strategies, crisis management and the colorful host of characters of those years.

In 1991, Clifford, with the assistance of Richard Holbrooke (the recently deceased diplomat), published his memoirs: Counsel to the President. This is very engaging reading, and highly recommended. However, the personal memoirs of any political person must be read with a degree of skepticism, as the capacity for slant and self-justification in such authors is quite high. John Acacia does a fine job in this biography of delivering a more balanced and realistic portrait of Clifford. In addition, Acacia's biography has the advantage of covering the last decade of Clifford's life, which includes Clifford's unfortunate entanglement in the BCCI scandal.

Acacia provides sources, many from the papers held by the Truman Presidential Library, which give different views of Clifford's role in certain events than Clifford himself gave in his memoirs. It is significant that one of Acacia's lead sources in this regard is George M. Elsey, who served as Clifford's assistant during the Truman years and during his tenure as Secretary of Defense. Elsey's own endorsement of the book on the back cover also speaks to the book's fairness and value. Clifford had a tendency in the early years to take credit for the work of others, and Acacia shows how Clifford exaggerated his own role in the first strategic review of U.S.-Soviet relations, and in the development of campaign strategy for the pundit-embarrassing election of 1948. It was the latter especially that contributed immensely to Clifford's reputation in Washington, yet he was not the true "Wise Man" behind it.

Nevertheless, this is not a Clifford-bashing book. Acacia finds Clifford's role in the Vietnam debate to be courageous and admirable. He draws us a complex picture of Clifford -- someone who certainly looked out for his own interests and grew rich from his connections, but who also had an enduring respect for the office of the President and did not hold back from giving his best advice, even to a mercurial and volatile Johnson. Indeed, there is fairly close agreement between Clifford's memoirs and Acacia's assessment of the '65-'69 period.

I give this book a strong recommendation as a companion to Clifford's memoirs. The book does have a few shortcomings. It is for the most part an academic biography, which is not a criticism in any way, but it is less engaging, certainly, than Clifford's own memoirs. (With the exception of the Vietnam-era chapters; in both books the story of this time is riveting, an outgrowth of the fact that the reader knows how it turned out in the end, and keeps hoping that the players will make the right decisions, but alas, they do not.) I found the section on the BCCI scandal to be difficult to follow and would have preferred a bit more elaboration. Occasionally, Acacia's evaluations of Clifford rely a bit too much on questionable psychological hypotheses, but he is nowhere dogmatic about such opinions, and is generally well researched and balanced. He has made a most valuable contribution to our understanding of this prominent American.

How we should long for the days when a President of the United States could "phone a friend" and receive "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". Clark Clifford was such a man. Beginning with his close friendship with Harry Truman and extending into the 1980's he seemed to offer practical advice for the powerful. Throughout my reading, I seriously wondered what a "President Clifford" might have been like. It appears that we would've avoided such a major commitmemen in Vietnam and the Democratic Party would've been spared many of its 20th century divisions.

Anyone interested in "How Washington Really Works" should read this & recommend it to friends.