Clark Clifford: The Wise Man of Washington

Although not a household name, Clark Clifford (1906–1998) advised Democratic presidents from Truman to Johnson. Acacia, American history professor at William Paterson University, has absorbed a mass of material and delivers an insightful if not always flattering biography. Fiercely ambitious, Clifford was a successful St. Louis lawyer when fellow Missourian Harry Truman became president in 1945. A senior colleague invited Clifford to Washington, where within a year his organizational skills won him promotion to Truman's special counsel. Happy to take credit for Truman's spectacular 1948 election upset, Clifford kept his reputation as a political genius for the next 20 years, although his opposition to sending troops to Vietnam put him in LBJ's doghouse until 1968, when—thanks to the possibility of peace talks and his own deft maneuvering—he replaced Robert McNamara as secretary of defense. This astute political biography concentrates on Washington infighting, position papers, memos, debates and quarrels on subjects ranging from trivial to world-shaking. Clifford comes across as a clear-eyed political strategist with genuinely noble ideals, but who looked after his own interests, often claiming others' ideas as his own and “parlay[ing] his government service into a lucrative private legal career.” (Oct.)