William P. Clark obit

Former Reagan aide William P. Clark dies at 81

 

He was not on the list.

William P. Clark, who rose from campaign volunteer to one of President Ronald Reagan's most trusted advisers, has died. He was 81.

Clark died Saturday at his ranch home in the central California town of Shandon after a long battle with Parkinson's disease, according to his son.

"It's been a hard fight for him, but we do feel he's in a better place and he's not suffering any longer," Paul Clark said Sunday.

The elder Clark began working for Reagan by managing the actor's 1966 gubernatorial campaign in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles. He ascended to various political jobs as Reagan moved from the Golden State to the White House.

Clark worked for Reagan in Sacramento, rising to the position of executive secretary, before accepting a judgeship with the San Luis Obispo County Superior Court. Reagan later appointed him to the state appellate court in Los Angeles, and then the state Supreme Court, before he moved to Washington to serve as deputy secretary of state and national security adviser.

Clark was national security adviser when Reagan maneuvered the Soviet Union toward arms control, and he was a key player in Reagan's philosophy of "peace through strength." Their close relationship led Time magazine to name Clark "the second most powerful man in the White House" in a 1983 cover story.

The New York Times said Clark had more access to Reagan than anyone else.

"They had very similar ideas about what ought to be done," Edwin Meese, who served as counselor to Reagan and then as attorney general, told the San Luis Obispo Tribune in 2009. "And they also knew and understood one another very well, having worked together back in the California days."

Clark then served as interior secretary for nearly two years, replacing unpopular department head James Watt, before returning to his private law practice and business consulting firm.

Born in 1931 in Oxnard to a family of lawmen (his grandfather Robert was Ventura County sheriff and a U.S. marshal; his father, William Sr., was the police chief of Oxnard), Clark served in the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps in Europe in the mid-1950s. He attended both Stanford University and Loyola Law School without earning degrees, but nevertheless passed the bar exam.

"That's been pointed out throughout his career that he finished neither college nor law school, but be that as it may he did just fine," his son Paul said.

After retiring from public life, Clark and his wife Joan designed and built a chapel in Shandon that they donated to the community. A devout Catholic, he also became a strong abortion opponent.

Clark is survived by five children. His wife died four years ago.

Clark was born in Oxnard, California on October 23, 1931, the son of William Petit and Bernice Gregory Clark.

Clark attended Villanova Preparatory School in Ojai. After completing high school, Clark went on to Stanford University and Loyola Law School while managing his ranch. Not being able to dedicate sufficient time and resources towards completing his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, Clark never graduated from Stanford or Loyola. Nevertheless, he scored well enough on entrance exams to gain admittance to law school, and he passed the California state bar exam without a law school degree, after failing his first attempt at the California state bar exam. He also served in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the election as President of the United States. Clark reached the apex of his power when Reagan appointed Clark as National Security Advisor, and he temporarily became preeminent among presidential aides. A longtime rancher friend of Reagan, according to Edmund Morris's Dutch, Clark would walk into Reagan's office unannounced, an unheard-of practice for even the most senior officials. Clark even suggested to the president in light of foreign policy troubles bedeviling the United States in the mid-1980s that Reagan consider not running for reelection in 1984. By that time, however, George Shultz had surpassed Clark in influence, and Reagan apparently gave Clark's suggestion no thought.

Clark's biographers credit him with convincing Reagan that the Soviet Union could be pushed to the edge of collapse. The strategy was opposed by Secretary of State George Shultz, among others, leading to rancor in the White House.

Morris writes in his admitted semi-fictionalized narrative biography that Clark resigned in late 1983 when he tired of the "unceasing hostility of [Michael] Deaver, George Shultz, and Nancy Reagan." Morris described Clark as "the only man who ever got within a furlong of intimacy" with the notoriously distant Reagan, and his ability to relate to Reagan inspired jealousy, at the same time that Clark's taciturn nature made him unlikely to build allies.

A differing PBS account quotes Mike Deaver via his book "Nancy", pg. 48: "Staff might have resented my closeness with Nancy, but to my knowledge, it was never a problem. Bill Clark and Ed Meese, then the legal-affairs counsel, were happy to have me working closely with Nancy because that freed them up to concentrate on policy and appointments. Often, too they would use me as back door to the first lady, to get her input ..." The PBS "Role of a Lifetime" url also lists some support of a conflict with George Shultz: "I knew that I would have to insist on dealing directly with the president. I could not let the White House staff interpret me to him. That was especially true when it came to Clark, because his views and instincts were different from mine ..." Noted authority Lou Cannon concluded that "[Mrs. Reagan] was very much opposed to Bill Clark. She wanted him out of (the NSA position) because she felt that it was interfering with (President) Reagan's efforts to open up better relations with the Soviet Union." Fellow Reagan family biographer James Benze furthers in the commentary, "Nancy Reagan (then) enlists other moderates in the administration to make William Clark's life miserable as National Security Advisor."