Down-Home Quick Study

What they need now is a judge and not another advocate." In that phrase, an old friend of Richard Allen's summed up why the White House chose a true foreign policy neophyte, Deputy Secretary of State William P. Clark, as the new National Security Adviser. A California lawyer and rancher who wears boots with three-piece suits, Clark had to admit during confirmation hearings a year ago that he could not name the Prime Ministers of South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Since then Clark has earned respect throughout the Administration as a quick study and an able manager. He also won the friendship of Alexander Haig, whose job he may well have saved during the Secretary of State's testy bouts with Allen and the White House staff. Even more valuable for his new role as mediator, Clark took no public positions on issues that tend to divide the Reagan team into factions of pragmatists and ideologues. Says one official who knows Clark well: "Like the President, he believes we live in a world with one adversary, the Soviets. But he is pragmatic and doesn't impose that view to the exclusion of regional realities."

Clark, 50, owes every job of his 15-year public career to Ronald Reagan. He was running a law firm in his home town of Oxnard when they met during Reagan's 1966 gubernatorial campaign; the next year. Clark became Reagan's chief of staff. He devised a "mini-memo" system of single-page briefings, stamped INFORMATION or DECISION, so Reagan would know at a glance whether a response was needed. Among Clark's subordinates then were Edwin Meese III and Michael Deaver. Clark remains very friendly with both, but reminds listeners that they once worked for him. Another friend from that era is Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. That bond will be especially useful, in light of the frequent policy clashes between Weinberger and Haig.

Reagan named Clark a superior court judge in 1969, prompting a public uproar because Clark had dropped out of two colleges (Stanford and the University of Santa Clara) and out of Loyola Law School in 1955. He passed the bar exam only on his second try, yet Reagan promoted him twice more, to the California supreme court in 1972. As a justice, Clark was meticulous and efficient. Says a former law clerk: "He spent a lot of time streamlining the language in his opinions, to get rid of the 'thats' and 'whiches' and anything else superfluous." Clark, a family man with five children, loves the rural life. Preferring the bench to politics, he declined to join Reagan's presidential campaign team and turned down key jobs at Agriculture and the CIA before agreeing to serve as Haig's deputy.

At State, he was in the office by 7 a.m. every day. He was candid with the press, unpretentious with colleagues and courteous with visitors, whom he often escorted to and from his office door. Slow-spoken and ruminative, with an open face and piercing eyes, Clark amiably acknowledges his limitations, but underplays his ambitions. He has proved an adept student of the protocols of Washington. Asked last week about his lack of credentials, he refused to take the bait. His answer: "I have left that determination to the man who made the decision, namely the President of the United States."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.