[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 19, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Page S721]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLARK CLIFFORD

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, at a time when we risk the ever 
coarsening of our public affairs, we would do well to remember a man 
whose service to this country was distinguished as no other for 
civility and elegance. I ask that this tribute to Clark M. Clifford by 
Sander Vanocur be printed in the Record.
  The tribute follows.

                       Tribute to Clark Clifford

                          (By Sander Vanocur)

       The following anonymous poem was sent to Clark Clifford's 
     daughters, Joyce and Randall, by their sister, Faith, who 
     could not be here today:

     Think of stepping on shore
       and finding it Heaven,
     Of taking hold of a hand
       and finding it God's,
     Of breathing new air,
       and finding it celestial air,
     Of feeling invigorated
       and finding it immortality,
     Of passing from storm and tempest
       to an unbroken calm,
     Of waking up,
       and finding it Home.

       In the secular sense, Clark Clifford found that home in 
     Washington more than fifty years ago. And having found that 
     home, let it be said that while he was here, he graced this 
     place.
       It was a much different place when he and Marny came here, 
     smaller in size but larger in imagination, made larger in 
     imagination by World War II. It may have been, then and for a 
     good time after, as John F. Kennedy once noted, a city of 
     Southern efficiency and Northern charm. But it was also, 
     at least then, a place where dreams could be fashioned 
     into reality. Being an intensely political city, dreams, 
     as always, had to be fashioned by reality. And it was in 
     this art of political compromise where Clark Clifford 
     flourished. He was known as the consummate Washington 
     insider. Quite often the term was used in the pejorative 
     sense. It should not have been. If you believe as he did 
     in what George Orwell meant when he wrote that in the end 
     everything is political, it should be a case for 
     celebration rather than lamentation that he played the 
     role, for if he had not played this role who else of his 
     generation could have played it quite so well, especially 
     when the time came to tell a President of the United 
     States, who was also a very old friend, that the national 
     interests of this nation could no longer be served by our 
     continuing involvement in Vietnam?
       We know of his public triumphs. Some of us also know of his 
     personal kindnesses. Many years ago, at a very bleak period 
     in both my personal and professional life--you know in this 
     city it is bleak when your phone calls are not returned by 
     people you have known for years--there were two individuals 
     in this city who faithfully returned my calls. One was Ben 
     Bradlee. The other was Clark Clifford. When Clark first 
     invited me to his office during this bleak period to offer 
     encouragement and guidance, he closed the door, took no phone 
     calls, sat behind his desk, his hands forming the legendary 
     steeple and listened and advised. On that first visit to his 
     office I looked down on his desk where there appeared to be 
     at least fifty messages, topped by what seemed to be 
     inaugural medallions. I thought to myself on that first visit 
     that Clark Clifford had put the word on hold just to listen 
     to me. But the third time I cam to his office, it occurred to 
     me that it was just possible those messages had been there 
     for twenty years.
       Clark Clifford's final years were not what he would have 
     wished for himself nor what his friends would have wished for 
     him and his family. They seemed to echo the first lines in 
     Chapter Nine of Henry Adams' novel ``Democracy,'' perhaps the 
     best novel ever written about this city. The lines are: 
     ``Whenever a man reaches to the top of the political ladder, 
     his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become 
     critical and exacting.'' On this occasion, I cannot speak of 
     his enemies, but I can say that his friends will not be 
     critical or exacting. We will think, instead, of Othello's 
     words just before he dies:

     Soft you; a word or two before you go.
     I have done the state some service, and they know it--
     No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,
     When you shall these unlucky deeds relate.
     Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
     Nor set down aught in malice.

       We who loved Clark Clifford will do that and more. We will 
     say now and henceforth: Clark Clifford did the state some 
     service and we know it.

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