Clinton's People "An Instinct for The Important"

By J.F.O. MCALLISTER WASHINGTON

A year out of Harvard Law School in 1972, Sandy Berger was traveling with presidential candidate George McGovern as a speechwriter. When they landed in San Antonio for a rally, Berger caught a first glimpse of his future boss, bounding up the steps of the plane: a tall, striking young man, improbably clad in a Colonel Sanders white suit, who was serving as McGovern's Texas coordinator. Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger have been "real friends" ever since, says a senior Clinton aide. "You can see the affection when they're in the room together."

When Clinton weighed whether or not to run for President in 1988, Berger, then a Washington trade lawyer who had represented Toyota and foreign steel producers, as well as Poland's Solidarity trade union, was one of the confidants who journeyed to Little Rock to offer advice. He served as co- director of Clinton's foreign policy team during the '92 campaign and transition period, and will soon move into a White House office as Deputy ! National Security Adviser -- not bad for a man with only three years of experience in the art of conducting foreign policy.

Berger served that apprenticeship in Jimmy Carter's State Department, first writing speeches for Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and later taking on a broader advisory role. "He writes very clearly, simply, eloquently, in primary colors rather than purple," says Tony Lake, then his boss at State, who will now, as Clinton's National Security Adviser, be Berger's boss at the White House.

Berger's great asset to Clinton has been -- and will be -- what Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer who served with Berger on the board of a human-rights group, calls "an unerring instinct for the important" -- the ability to figure out which issues are peripheral before that becomes obvious to others, and to avoid spending any more time in a meeting than needed to accomplish his purpose. Colleagues praise him for other lawyerly virtues as well: sound judgment, discretion, the ability to absorb technical minutiae fast without losing sight of the big picture, a willingness, says a friend, "to work his ass off." Berger is kind to secretaries, seldom crabby and uses a quizzical, ironic humor to defuse stress. He loves the front line of politics; he helped drill Clinton before the presidential debates and often accompanied him on the campaign plane. "If I were in real trouble and allowed one call," says Lake, "Sandy's the one."

These days, it is Brent Scowcroft, the outgoing National Security Adviser, who is frequently at the other end of the secure phone in Berger's shabby transition office, keeping the Clinton camp informed of what Bush is planning in Somalia, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Berger gives Bush's foreign policy team credit "for working together about as well as it's been done," a virtue whose importance is reinforced by the memory of how Carter's presidency was undermined by the unceasing attacks on Vance by Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Berger's instinct, like Clinton's, is to build a consensus rather than obliterate opponents, "to get the job done with the least amount of damage," as a friend puts it. Lake calls this trait "a taste for communal enterprise." During the campaign, that attention to bridge building brought many lapsed Democratic foreign policy heavies like Jeane Kirkpatrick and Paul Nitze back into the fold and helped accomplish the goal, as Berger put it, of "keeping foreign policy off the front pages," so Clinton could hammer away on domestic issues.

With Lake, Berger's relationship is more one of an alter ego than a subordinate. Berger was sufficiently self-effacing to bring Lake into the campaign as his boss, and the two ended up co-directing foreign policy for Clinton with remarkable harmony. "Almost in shorthand, we can argue things through, and at the end neither of us has kept score," says Lake.

Berger can make Washington's wheels whirl and knows Clinton well enough to tell him when he is going wrong. But what does Berger himself really value? "His family, the Baltimore Orioles and human rights," quips a friend. Central to his thinking, Berger says, is the conviction that pursuing American values abroad -- democracy, human rights, free markets -- "is very much in our interests. It's a chaotic world, but one that's also filled with opportunities, because American leadership is not only unquestioned but actively desired by many countries."

That statement distills the centrist internationalism of the Clinton team, which is convinced that the world will be safer and more stable -- goals that were also Bush's watchwords -- if the U.S. stands up more robustly for democracy and human rights. Berger respects Jimmy Carter's ideals and is attracted to service in government as a means of doing good, but he measures good in terms of practical results. "Carter launched too many initiatives and kind of overloaded the circuits," Berger reflects. In serving his old friend from Arkansas, he is determined to ensure that the new President does not launch any foreign initiative he cannot land.