Presidential Advisor
Clifford went to Washington, D.C., first to serve as Assistant to the President's Naval Advisor, after the naming of a personal friend from Missouri as the President's Naval Advisor. Following his discharge from the Navy, he remained at Truman's side as White House Counsel from 1946 to 1950, as Truman came rapidly to trust and rely upon Clifford.
Clifford was a key architect of Truman's campaign in 1948, when Truman pulled off a stunning upset victory over Republican nominee Thomas Dewey. Clifford encouraged Truman to embrace a left-wing populist image in hope of undermining the impact on the race of third-party Progressive candidate Henry A. Wallace, who had served as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Vice-President from 1941 to 1945. Clifford also believed that a strong pro-civil rights stance, while sure to alienate traditional Southern Democrats, would not result in a serious challenge to the party's supremacy in that region. This prediction was foiled by Strom Thurmond's candidacy as a splinter States' Rights Democrat, but Clifford's strategy nonetheless helped win Truman election in his own right and establish the Democratic Party's position in the Civil Rights Movement.
In his role as presidential advisor, perhaps his most significant contribution was his successful advocacy, along with David Niles, of prompt 1948 recognition of the new state of Israel, over the strong objections of Secretary of State, General George Marshall.
After leaving the government in 1950, Clifford practiced law in Washington, D.C., but continued to advise Democratic Party leaders. One of his law clients was Kennedy, then a U.S. Senator, and Clifford tried to assuage Truman's suspicion of Kennedy and his father, Joseph P. Kennedy.
In 1960, Clifford was a member of President-elect Kennedy's Committee on the Defense Establishment, headed by Stuart Symington. In May 1961, Kennedy appointed Clifford to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which he chaired beginning in April 1963 and ending in January 1968.
After Johnson became president in November 1963 following Kennedy's assassination, Clifford served frequently as an unofficial White House Counsel and sometimes undertook short-term official duties, including a trip with General Maxwell Taylor in 1967 to Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Read more about this topic: Clark Clifford
Famous quotes containing the word presidential:
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)