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6 One Foot out the Door Truman’s 1948 underdog victory was immensely rewarding to Clifford, on both a personal and a professional level. His loyalty and devotion to Truman were genuine, and it must have been satisfying to help Truman win the presidency in his own right. But Clifford was ready to move on. Despite the thrill of victory and the belief that he had been engaged in a “noble quest for the highest honor to which an American may aspire,” Clifford also, he admitted, “found most of the actual work of a campaign tedious or inconsequential.”1 He was also under financial pressure: his $12,000 annual salary as special counsel was inadequate, and he had depleted most of his savings. Just prior to the election Clifford confided to Truman that he was weighing his options and might leave the administration to practice law. Truman was sympathetic but asked Clifford to stay on for another year, to which he agreed. But Clifford’s heart was elsewhere and, while he served for all of 1949, his enthusiasm for the job was not what it used to be. According to Clifford, he “was reaching the point of diminishing returns” in his “government service.”2 After the election and before diving back into the business of government , Truman and his staff took a well-deserved vacation in Key West. Clifford, who was usually impeccably dressed and careful to preserve his image, completely let his hair down. He donned a pair of tattered shorts, refrained from shaving for a week, and walked about barefoot. An article in Redbook magazine from that time wrote that he “resembled a bronzed young beachcomber.” Truman was so amused with Clifford’s transformation that he took to calling him “Jeeter” after an unkempt character from the play Tobacco Road. Truman’s victory was for Clifford a personal vindication, given that he had been accused by Time of leading Truman to defeat. Redbook reported that Clifford kept a copy of the Time story in the top drawer of his desk: “Occasionally Clifford likes to pull out the story and read it over again. With pardonable pride 152 CLARK CLIFFORD he has told his friends, ‘You know, I was mad when this article came out. But now I think it was a real good story. It turns out that the things it accused me of doing were the very things that helped win the election!’”3 The vacation was but a momentary respite from the work ahead. Awaiting Clifford upon his return to Washington was Truman’s upcoming Inaugural Address and, after that, the State of the Union. Truman planned to devote the Inaugural Address to his domestic agenda and focus on foreign policy in his State of the Union speech. Just before departing for Key West Clifford asked George Elsey, who was left behind in Washington, to start gathering ideas for the two messages. While Clifford was in Key West Elsey got to work, but the more he thought about the president’s instructions, the more he was convinced that Truman had it backward. Elsey believed that since it was likely that Truman would have only one opportunity to make an Inaugural Address while he would have four more State of the Union addresses, he should use the Inaugural Address as a forum to discuss foreign policy. “It would be an address far beyond just the Congress, it would be the American people and other countries, both friendly and unfriendly; whereas, the State of the Union could confine itself to domestic matters,” Elsey recalled. Clifford and Elsey discussed the subject on the phone, and Elsey followed up their discussion with a long memorandum. Clifford was convinced, and after talking it over with Truman, the president came around as well.4 By shifting the focus of the Inaugural to foreign affairs and emphasizing that it would be a singular event, Elsey had put himself into a corner. The heightened expectations could only be satisfied with a bold new idea. In preparation for the annual State of the Union address, Clifford sent a message to the various government agencies looking for ideas. In much the same way he sent a memorandum to the State Department asking for ideas for the Inaugural, which would be “a democratic manifesto addressed to the peoples of the world, not just to the American people.”5 Elsey began work on the speech, and although most of it took shape with relative ease, it was still...

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