Lender in Chief

Who would succeed A.W. Clausen, the former BankAmerica chairman, as president of the World Bank when his five-year term expired on June 30? For months, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker was touted for the job, as was Labor Secretary William Brock. Last week the guessing game finally ended as the Reagan Administration named Barber Conable, 63, a highly regarded former Republican Congressman from New York, as its candidate to head the international development institution.

Conable's appointment must still be approved by the executive board of the 149-nation World Bank. Nonetheless, his eventual confirmation is a certainty since, by tradition, the U.S. has always named the bank's president, while Western European nations name the head of the International Monetary Fund, a separate lending authority for balance-of-payment difficulties.

Conable is a lawyer by training, rather than a banker, but he has impressive leadership credentials. Born in Warsaw, N.Y., and educated at Cornell University, the independent-minded legislator from Rochester first won his seat in the House of Representatives in 1964 and speedily garnered bipartisan respect for his intelligence, diligence and integrity. As a member of, and eventually the ranking Republican on, the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Conable was an expert on U.S. tax policy and a vocal proponent of free international trade. In 1980 he served as finance chairman of George Bush's bid for the G.O.P. presidential nomination. After his 1985 retirement from Congress, Conable spurned a lucrative lobbying career in Washington--"I don't want to be owned," he said--and took a post teaching political science at the University of Rochester.

Treasury Secretary James Baker, who worked with Conable in the Bush campaign, suggested the ex-Congressman for the World Bank job. In that post, Conable may be able to help the Secretary implement the socalled Baker plan to ease the debt crisis of developing nations. Unveiled in October, the plan calls for the World Bank, which lends about $15 billion a year to some 100 developing nations, to provide a wider range of financial assistance than previously, and also to play a role in prescribing long-term economic reforms for its debtor clients. Lately, the Baker plan has showed signs of stalling, but Conable's nomination is clearly intended to give the scheme a new boost.