Commerce Chief Mixed Charm, Determination

For Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, who helped engineer President Clinton’s longshot election and turned a backwater agency into a powerful engine to promote exports, bringing peace and prosperity to war-torn Bosnia was a challenge like any other: It would require charm, determination and a knack for making a deal.

Brown carried plenty of each when he left Washington for Bosnia-Herzegovina with a contingent of American corporate executives.

In a moving tribute to the secretary on Wednesday, President Clinton remembered Brown as a man who “walked and ran and flew through life, and he was a magnificent life force.

“Every American should be grateful that at a very difficult moment in our nation’s history, he made this Commerce Department what it was meant to be--an instrument for realizing the potential of every American.”

He was a person who “was continually reaching out, trying to bridge the differences between people,” said the president, clearly moved by the loss of his friend and advisor.

The latest flight of the “Ron Brown Express,” as his trade missions were called by critics and admirers alike, had been a milestone in a long journey for the 54-year-old. Brown, a suave bridge-builder with a gold-plated resume, grew up in Harlem. He had been active in the civil rights movement, then served as an Urban League lawyer and a political operative for the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Having helped elect Clinton in 1992, he was rewarded with a Cabinet appointment and was considered by many to have been the first true post-Cold War secretary of Commerce. That was one of many firsts on a long list: Brown was the first African American to lead either political party, the first black partner at the powerful Washington law firm of Patton Boggs & Blow, the first black member of his fraternity at Middlebury College in Vermont.

But as successful as his tenure at Commerce was, it also had been controversial.

Brown was the subject of an independent counsel investigation into his finances, including a $500,000 payment from a former business partner, Nolanda Hill, made at the time he assumed his post in the Clinton administration. The payment was intended to buy out Brown’s 50% share of a business partnership with Hill, but Brown had invested no money in the venture. As part of that buyout, Hill repaid $190,000 of Brown’s debts for legal bills, credit lines and two mortgages.

The investigation, led by Florida attorney Daniel S. Pearson, is still underway but no charges have been filed.

As one of history’s most peripatetic Commerce secretaries, Brown also had been criticized for his overseas travel. A recent audit conducted for Congress showed that the secretary and his office staff spent nearly $1.4 million on travel during 1994, nearly 1 1/2 times more than the $552,389 spent in 1991 by Commerce in the previous administration.

But the criticism did little to ruffle the self-assured Brown, who has maintained a heavy travel schedule in recent months. Casting aside congressional efforts to cut his budget and kill his department, Brown repeatedly told reporters that he saw the promotion of U.S. trade abroad as a critical mission and vowed that he would not cut back his trips abroad.

Those missions have established Brown’s reputation as a super-salesman for American business, prompting praise and support from corporate America even as Republicans in Congress sought to gut his agency. He was key in persuading Saudi Arabia to reject the European Airbus and conclude a major purchase of Boeing planes instead. He has helped connect American business people with billions in potential Chinese exports and was a major force in the Clinton administration’s recent decision not to strip China of trading preferences. He personally helped clinch deals for U.S. companies during a marketing trip to India. And he has been a relentless booster for minority-owned businesses around the world.

“It was clear the Cold War was over when he took up residence at the Hoover building [Commerce Department headquarters],” said Wallace Workman, vice president for international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But Brown’s knack for salesmanship was hardly new, and he had used it in politics as well as in business.

In 1991, after the Persian Gulf War was won, then-President Bush’s approval ratings were at 90% and the Democrats’ chances of recapturing the White House were considered nil. But Brown launched an audacious campaign to head the Democratic National Committee. Over initial skepticism, the Washington attorney and lobbyist won the job with a plan to elect a Democratic president and a relentless optimism that it could be done.

“The party was down and out and he rescued us,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a former civil rights activist who first met Brown in the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s. “He came every Thursday morning to our Democratic House whip meetings and it was Ron Brown who kept us up. His very presence added something. He was always up, hopeful, optimistic. He kept saying we can do it, this is the way we’re gonna do it. And we did it. He did it.”

Added Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-N.J.), leader of the House Black Caucus and a friend of Brown: “It was a bold challenge. But he had a very clear vision of how to get a job done. . . . He was a management-by-objectives person.”

Brown ran Clinton’s 1992 campaign, a pro at the helm of a smooth operation.

“We chalked their trouble-free convention up to Ron Brown, who had been through it countless times,” wrote Republican strategist Mary Matalin in “All’s Fair,” the book about the election that she coauthored with her husband, Democratic strategist James Carville.

After the victory, Brown was offered several jobs, including jobs as ambassador to the United Nations and U.S. trade representative. But he wanted something more and decided to accept the Cabinet post in an agency that never before had been headed by a black person.

“I had a couple of options in the administration, and the one I chose to pursue was the one that I thought would make the most difference as far as removing old ceilings and barriers and stereotypes and obstacles,” he said in an interview.

But for all of Brown’s smooth mastery of business and politics and his success in a world dominated by white men, friends said Wednesday that he did not forget his responsibilities to others who would follow in his footsteps. He worked hard to advance the careers of young black professionals and, of his first round of appointments at Commerce, 18% were black.

“He never for a day forgot he was black,” said John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League.

“He dealt with the rich and powerful but he never forgot the common touch, never forgot his roots,” added Mack, a friend for 20 years. That Brown mixed so easily in a world dominated by whites--some of them hostile--”tells me that Ron was very comfortable with himself,” Mack said. “He possessed tremendous inner security. He never felt inferior to anybody.”