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These days, it is Brent Scowcroft, the outgoing National Security Adviser, who is frequently at the other end of the secure phone in Berger's shabby transition office, keeping the Clinton camp informed of what Bush is planning in Somalia, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Berger gives Bush's foreign policy team credit "for working together about as well as it's been done," a virtue whose importance is reinforced by the memory of how Carter's presidency was undermined by the unceasing attacks on Vance by Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Berger's instinct, like Clinton's, is to build a consensus rather than obliterate opponents, "to get the job done with the least amount of damage," as a friend puts it. Lake calls this trait "a taste for communal enterprise." During the campaign, that attention to bridge building brought many lapsed Democratic foreign policy heavies like Jeane Kirkpatrick and Paul Nitze back into the fold and helped accomplish the goal, as Berger put it, of "keeping foreign policy off the front pages," so Clinton could hammer away on domestic issues.
With Lake, Berger's relationship is more one of an alter ego than a subordinate. Berger was sufficiently self-effacing to bring Lake into the campaign as his boss, and the two ended up co-directing foreign policy for Clinton with remarkable harmony. "Almost in shorthand, we can argue things through, and at the end neither of us has kept score," says Lake.
Berger can make Washington's wheels whirl and knows Clinton well enough to tell him when he is going wrong. But what does Berger himself really value? "His family, the Baltimore Orioles and human rights," quips a friend. Central to his thinking, Berger says, is the conviction that pursuing American values abroad -- democracy, human rights, free markets -- "is very much in our interests. It's a chaotic world, but one that's also filled with opportunities, because American leadership is not only unquestioned but actively desired by many countries."
That statement distills the centrist internationalism of the Clinton team, which is convinced that the world will be safer and more stable -- goals that were also Bush's watchwords -- if the U.S. stands up more robustly for democracy and human rights. Berger respects Jimmy Carter's ideals and is attracted to service in government as a means of doing good, but he measures good in terms of practical results. "Carter launched too many initiatives and kind of overloaded the circuits," Berger reflects. In serving his old friend from Arkansas, he is determined to ensure that the new President does not launch any foreign initiative he cannot land.