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Energy & Hours. Clifford has a bonhomous delight in political and social intercourse that will rule him out as a recluse in the Pentagon's E Ring. Nor is he expected to keep McNamara's crushing twelve-hour work days, which of late have been devoted to next year's mammoth $77 billion defense budget and his telephone-book-sized annual review. Though almost completely restored after a debilitating bout of Asiatic hepatitis he brought back from a mission to Viet Nam in 1965, Clifford still has to pace his energies.
Politics and Clifford came together by accident. Leaving his successful law practice in St. Louis for a wartime naval staff job, he was abruptly summoned to the White House in July 1945 for a five-week stint filling in for
Presidential Naval Aide Jake Vardaman, an old St. Louis friend. Harry Truman's eye was soon caught by Clifford's precocious polish, and he asked him to stay. By early 1946, Clifford had become one of Truman's most intimate advisers.
Though rarely an innovator, Clifford realized early that Harry Truman was America's common man. As the President's popularity plummeted, Clifford's stubborn loyalty and combative instinct helped turn Truman's fortunes in 1948. Battling an ulcer, he went all the way with H.S.T. for 22,000 whistle-stopping miles and saw him snatch victory from odds-on Favorite Tom Dewey.
In 1950, Clifford resigned—in need of big money for his family. Today he heads one of Washington's most lucrative law offices, with a gilt-edged roster of corporate clients who prize his insider's knowledge of governmental processes as well as his legal acumen.
To avoid any conflict of interest, Clifford last week pledged to sever his ties with his firm and liquidate his holdings. "I will have but one client from now on," he declared. "And that client will be the United States."
Even so, his tenure in the Pentagon is likely to be brief. If President Johnson is re-elected in November, he is expected to seek younger men for his Cabinet. Meantime the Pentagon brass does not envisage radical changes. Clifford admires McNamara's administrative innovations, cost analysis and emphasis on flexible response to aggression. And on the crucial question of civilian rein on the generals, alterations are likely to be subtle, as McNamara's stern hand yields to Clifford's velvet-gloved persuasion. The new Secretary's reading of history—and the history he has lived—convinces him that civilian suzerainty is vital.
There is no doubt among those who know him that Clifford agrees wholly with Lyndon Johnson on the aims and conduct of the war. After his trip through Southeast Asia last summer with Maxwell Taylor, he enthusiastically reported that "the allies are on the right track." A man of rare experience in Federal Government, he has neither the temperament nor stamina to concern himself with minutiae, as McNamara did. On the other hand, he has a grasp of the military and congressional mechanisms that his predecessor, for all his innovative brilliance, could never quite master. Most important, he understands the mind—and has the complete confidence—of Lyndon Baines Johnson. However long Clark Clifford may serve as Secretary of Defense, he will run a taut shop.