[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 14 (Tuesday, January 26, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Page S1016]
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 pubic 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 at the Washington National Cathedral, November 19, 
                                 1998)

       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 its 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 cause 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 use 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 world on hold just to 
     listen to me. But the third time I came 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 for his family. They seemed to echo the first lines 
     in Chapter Nine of Henry Adam's 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 
     this 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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