Page 119 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

CHAPTER 11

LEADERS ARE

PERSISTENT

Although the purpose of the trip to Israel with his principal was diplo-
matic—to study American foreign assistance efforts there—Wesley Clark
(WHF 75–76) was far more interested in military matters. After all, he was
an army officer first and foremost. Before being selected as a White House
Fellow, Clark had graduated from West Point, earned a Rhodes Scholar-
ship and graduated from Oxford, and commanded a company in Vietnam.
Just one month after assuming command of his unit early in 1970, Clark
was shot four times by a Vietcong soldier armed with an AK-47 assault rifle,
but he continued to direct his troops as he lay bleeding on the battlefield,
leading them through a counterattack that crushed the Vietcong offensive.

As a White House Fellow, Clark was assigned to work with James Lynn,
the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, who had taken his
young Fellow along on a trip to Israel in 1976. So it was that Clark found
himself in Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s dining room, preparing to enjoy
an evening of fine food and captivating conversation with some of the most
powerful men in the Middle East.
“It was late at night, as Israeli dinners usually are,” Clark recalled.
“There were seven of us at the dinner. I was with Jim Lynn and Don
Ogilvie, who was Associate Director of the OMB, and on the other side
were Prime Minister Rabin, Defense Minister Shimon Peres, Foreign
Minister Yigal Allon, and Minister of Finance Yehoshua Rabinowitz. I was

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