William P. Clark died two years ago this month. When he passed, I wrote a tribute here at The American Spectator, aptly titled “Bill Clark’s Divine Plan.”
For those unfamiliar with Judge Clark, he was, simply put, Ronald Reagan’s architect for the take-down of the Soviet empire during a crucial stint (1982-83) as national security adviser. He had been Reagan’s trusted aide dating back to the Sacramento years, where he was Governor Reagan’s chief of staff. It is hard to understate Clark’s kinship with Reagan and his role, though no one sought to understate the role more than Clark himself. It took me a long time to convince Bill Clark to let me tell his story, to let me write his biography, and even then I never really convinced him. Unfailingly the most humble man that I (and many others) ever met, he tried to talk me out of the project right ’til the moment it was copy-edited, bound, packaged, put on delivery trucks, and sitting in Barnes & Noble. Someone had to relate the story of Clark’s fascinating life, given that he himself refused. He was the only major Reagan figure who would not write a memoir, passing up a slam-dunk big book deal in the 1980s. He left the Reagan administration at the height of its (and his) power, quite literally riding off into the sunset to his beloved ranch in central California. The ranch was all he ever wanted.
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