Clark Clifford

Clark Clifford became one of Harry S. Truman’s closest advisers through a combination of careful preparation, political instinct, and a working relationship grounded in growing personal affection. First drawn into a major speech assignment as a Navy aide, he went on to counsel Truman on labor conflict, relations with the Soviet Union, civil rights, Palestine, and electoral strategy. His influence did not mean that he made decisions for the President: again and again, Clifford developed arguments and options, while Truman retained responsibility for the choice.

Entry into the White House

Clifford’s path into Truman’s inner circle began with an urgent writing problem. Truman’s seven-page draft for a speech had been passed to Charlie Ross, who judged that it would not work. Samuel Rosenman was summoned, and Truman, Ross, John Snyder, and Rosenman all contributed to a replacement. The principal work, however, fell to Clifford, then a temporary assistant to Jake Vardaman who had become a naval aide after Vardaman’s removal.

At thirty-nine, Clifford was a striking presence in uniform, but the account emphasizes his capability rather than his appearance: Truman quickly recognized him as calm, clearheaded, polished, and able. On the afternoon of April 24, Clifford began drafting alone in the Cabinet Room, working with a yellow legal pad and soft pencil. He was not an effortless writer; he wrote, erased, and rewrote sentence after sentence. By eight o’clock he had a rough draft, and a dozen people were waiting in the President’s office. Revisions continued until the broadcast was about to begin, with Rose Conway typing the final pages as Truman went on the air.

The assignment mattered beyond the speech itself. Clifford had known little about Truman before joining the White House, but soon became deeply impressed by him and wrote to his mother of an abiding affection for the President. The crisis also marked Clifford’s emergence as a central aide. Within weeks, he succeeded Rosenman as legal counsel to the President and remained almost constantly at Truman’s side. What had begun as a temporary posting became a durable political partnership.

Counsel in moments of confrontation

Clifford’s advice repeatedly encouraged Truman to meet opposition directly. After the November elections, he urged the President to challenge the legality of another threatened coal strike by John L. Lewis. Truman chose a confrontation that he described as a fight to the finish. Clifford later recalled the episode as an opportunity for the President to assert the authority of his office, especially against a labor leader whom Franklin D. Roosevelt had repeatedly accommodated. In Clifford’s view, the legal circumstances and the President’s position gave Truman reason to stand firm.

Clifford also helped shape Truman’s thinking about the Soviet Union. In July 1946, Truman privately commissioned him to prepare a comprehensive analysis of Soviet-American relations, the first of its kind for the administration. Clifford urged a firm response to Joseph Stalin and saw the document as an opening move in an effort to alert the American public. The final report impressed George Kennan, who called it excellent. Truman stayed up late reading it, then telephoned Clifford early the next morning to ask how many copies existed. There were ten; Truman ordered the other nine secured under lock and key, fearing that publication would damage efforts to settle the East-West conflict peacefully.

The report’s secrecy and Truman’s response reveal the limits as well as the reach of Clifford’s influence. He could formulate an argument for a stronger stand, but the President weighed the report’s possible consequences and controlled its circulation. Clifford’s policy work was consequential partly because it gave Truman a framework for deliberation, not because it displaced the President’s judgment. Years later, Clifford described the federal loyalty program as a response to the temper of the times and said he did not see how Truman could have acted otherwise, a retrospective qualification that complicates any simple portrait of him as an advocate of unrestrained firmness.

Political strategy and civil rights

Clifford’s political advice combined moral conviction with close calculation. He was among Truman’s most persistent aides in urging a strong civil-rights position, which he also understood as a way to claim new political ground against the Republican Congress. His approach was shaped by extensive preparation. A confidential, thirty-two-page forecast of the 1948 political landscape had been prepared by James A. Rowe Jr., who had consulted labor leaders, politicians, and newspaper reporters. Rowe framed his recommendations in terms of political advantage.

Because Rowe was a law partner of Thomas Corcoran, whom Truman disliked, Clifford chose not to identify Rowe as the report’s author. Clifford submitted it as his own, then worked with George Elsey on edits and refinements. The resulting document served not as a complete campaign blueprint but as a guide to political navigation. The episode shows Clifford’s practical methods: he gathered analysis, adapted it for the President, and sometimes managed the presentation of advice as carefully as its substance.

He brought the same preparation to the question of Palestine. In early May 1948, Truman asked him to make the case for immediate recognition of a new Jewish state that had not yet been named. Truman instructed Clifford to prepare as though arguing before the Supreme Court and identified Dean Marshall as the person he most needed to persuade. At the White House strategy meeting, Clifford recommended that the United States act quickly, before the Soviet Union, and recognize the state on May 13, even before its declaration. Truman acknowledged the difficulties, dangers, and political risks, but did not immediately accept the recommendation; he said the group should sleep on the matter. Clifford supplied a forceful case, while Truman remained visibly deliberate about the decision.

The 1948 campaign

Clifford helped encourage Truman to speak more often without a prepared text, believing that the public could respond to the candid, effective speaker he had seen in smaller gatherings. Truman’s off-the-cuff appearances before newspaper editors and Young Democrats in the spring of 1948 drew favorable attention, and the press began to notice what it called a new Truman. Clifford’s confidence in the President’s speaking ability did not remove the risks of spontaneity: some remarks made the staff uneasy, including a statement in Pocatello about the difficulty of proving accusations against a politician.

On the campaign train, Clifford worked as part of a collaborative speech operation rather than as a solitary author. Ross, Clifford, George Elsey, Charlie Murphy, and the newer writers David Noyes, Albert Carr, and John Franklin Carter prepared speeches as the tour moved from place to place. Most major addresses were composed along the way; each passed through several drafts, and Truman examined every line, readily accepting deletions and objecting to language that did not sound like him. Clifford’s role was therefore both practical and interpretive: he helped turn political aims into words while the President insisted on an unmistakably personal voice.

Clifford was also involved in the campaign’s political calculations. When Newsweek published a poll of fifty prominent political writers predicting the election, he left the train at an Indiana stop to find a copy before others could. Truman noticed that he had gone to the station and asked what the poll said; Clifford handed it over. Truman dismissed the panel’s judgment, but the exchange captures their familiarity and the campaign’s attention to how political expectations were being reported.

At a packed stadium, Truman delivered his most savage campaign speech, attacking Thomas E. Dewey and portraying a vote for him as a vote for fascism. David Noyes and Albert Carr had written it to provoke Dewey into fighting back, a strategy Truman accepted. Clifford later described the part desperation and fatigue could play in a campaign. His retrospective comments also resisted a single, flattering explanation of the victory: he believed Truman could have done better in New York, where Dewey’s margin was only 61,000 votes and Henry Wallace received half a million. Clifford thought more time there might have changed the result; without Wallace or Strom Thurmond, he estimated, Truman might have gained another eighty-five electoral votes. Yet he did not attribute Truman’s success simply to exceptional political acumen, nor did he treat Dewey’s poor campaign as a sufficient explanation.

Continuing influence and personal loyalty

Clifford remained an important adviser after the election, though the composition of Truman’s staff changed. By 1950, Charlie Murphy had replaced him as special counsel. Clifford nevertheless continued to visit the President, and in the summer of Truman’s seventh year in office he considered the sixty-seven-year-old President remarkably sound in both body and mind. That assessment reflects the closeness of their association, but also its limits: by then Clifford was an occasional visitor rather than the constant presence he had been during his years at the President’s side.

In March 1952, Truman summoned Clifford to Key West and met with him alone in the garden behind the Little White House. Clifford told Truman that he hoped the President would not run again. Truman worried about the effect withdrawal might have on the Korean War; Clifford replied that the course of the war had already been established. His counsel linked a personal political decision to a larger question of continuity, without claiming that withdrawal would alter the military course.

Clifford’s significance lies in the range of roles he occupied: labor adviser, analyst of Soviet policy, civil-rights strategist, advocate for recognition of Israel, campaign organizer, and trusted confidant. His writing could be laborious, his political reasoning could be tactical, and his advice did not always settle Truman’s course. Yet the recurring pattern is clear: Clifford prepared closely, argued directly, and helped Truman confront choices whose consequences extended well beyond the immediate room or campaign stop. The relationship endured through shifts in office and responsibility, giving Clifford unusual access while leaving the final burden of decision with the President.