A year out of Harvard Law School in 1972, Sandy Berger was traveling with presidential candidate George McGovern as a speechwriter. When they landed in San Antonio for a rally, Berger caught a first glimpse of his future boss, bounding up the steps of the plane: a tall, striking young man, improbably clad in a Colonel Sanders white suit, who was serving as McGovern's Texas coordinator. Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger have been "real friends" ever since, says a senior Clinton aide. "You can see the affection when they're in the room together."
When Clinton weighed whether or not to run for President in 1988, Berger, then a Washington trade lawyer who had represented Toyota and foreign steel producers, as well as Poland's Solidarity trade union, was one of the confidants who journeyed to Little Rock to offer advice. He served as co- director of Clinton's foreign policy team during the '92 campaign and transition period, and will soon move into a White House office as Deputy ! National Security Adviser -- not bad for a man with only three years of experience in the art of conducting foreign policy.
Berger served that apprenticeship in Jimmy Carter's State Department, first writing speeches for Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and later taking on a broader advisory role. "He writes very clearly, simply, eloquently, in primary colors rather than purple," says Tony Lake, then his boss at State, who will now, as Clinton's National Security Adviser, be Berger's boss at the White House.
Berger's great asset to Clinton has been -- and will be -- what Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer who served with Berger on the board of a human-rights group, calls "an unerring instinct for the important" -- the ability to figure out which issues are peripheral before that becomes obvious to others, and to avoid spending any more time in a meeting than needed to accomplish his purpose. Colleagues praise him for other lawyerly virtues as well: sound judgment, discretion, the ability to absorb technical minutiae fast without losing sight of the big picture, a willingness, says a friend, "to work his ass off." Berger is kind to secretaries, seldom crabby and uses a quizzical, ironic humor to defuse stress. He loves the front line of politics; he helped drill Clinton before the presidential debates and often accompanied him on the campaign plane. "If I were in real trouble and allowed one call," says Lake, "Sandy's the one."