I mean, we had these discussions, we had these ways to measure progress and so forth, that sometimes alarmed economists in the United States because they seemed protectionist. That was before the convention. I mean, the worst recession since the Great Depression occurred in 1981 and 1982 and in the fall of 82, in early August, Reagan was being described as Herbert Hoover, politically dead, gone, might as well already make his reservations back to Santa Barbara and so forth. But I interpreted that to mean, Maybe you should, because I felt that if he thought I shouldnt, hed say so. Bentsen had run for Congress at a very young age, successfully, was re-elected two or three times, then quit and went into business and was very successful in business. On preparing a whole set of materials and otherwise paving the way for Secretary Bentsen to walk into his office and be fully prepared to function from the first minute. If were talking about 1991, I think his ideas were in formation. Then we ended up for some strange set of reasons having a giant turnout and he wowed them. One, the recession of 91 and early or mid 92, the economy was performing poorly. and he said, No. Thats why the current President may turn out to be lucky. NAFTA had much broader support among the so-called or self-styled elites, the business leadership, all the economics community, the foreign policy establishment. Then once he started to make the rounds in New York, he generated very considerable positive reaction and became self-fulfilling, and raising money for him became quite a bit easier. I think thats a wonderful tradition. She wasnt a participant in those. Japanese discussions were harder, but the G7 summit was fine, it was easy. We came into office, the trade imbalance of payments deficit with Japan had risen to very high levels. No, I dont remember the actual moment when we met. You ultimately get into a room like this and you say, youd better start to train me, tell me how this happened. He managed himself beautifully and with great self-control, and Clinton had very little self-control. You dont want to start your Presidency off with a legislative defeat. Toward the middle and latter stages they met everyday. He has his own views in private, of course. It was just an evolution of the prior role. In fact, thats an important point. There was some action forcing the schedule and the President would have had to ditch the treaty, just say, Ive decided Im not for it. If you take the transition as one chunk of time, rather than chopping it up into chapters, I did a lot of work on personnelwe all did a lot of work on policy development, what was the economic policy going to be, and getting right down to very specific potential decisions. I was just going to make an observation about history, historians and non-historians who study Presidents past and present. But apropos of my comments earlier that classic, unreconstructed liberalism had never been my cup of tea, I never identified with Mario Cuomo. Do you have anyyou were sort of one of the casualties of this campaign, but was the Whitewater thing separate from this hate stuff? WebNot only are 10% of the U.S. House and Senate Jesuit-trained from Georgetown, but so are many of the world's political leaders, which should have you asking What are they really up to?" I did have the impression from the beginning that he was politically gifted and ambitious. Do you recall at what point you felt that there was some momentum being reestablished? Two questions, one of which was minor. Some of thats a function of, for lack of a better word, the culture within the group of people who worked in this administration, so that there is no penalty paid, in effect, among your former colleagues for being outspoken or saying something in the press critical to the President. The vote was really the most dramatic moment I ever experienced in six-and-a-half years of government service. From that time forward, about 79 times out of 80 Clinton did whatever Bentsen said. Oh sure, New York is, in terms of Democratic politics, not a terribly big town. That was pretty damn effective. But in any event, it hasnt ended with President Clintons leaving. Youd suggested earlier that a National Economic Council wasnt anything that was a particularly major innovation. I mean, youre sent down there, you have no training for it. Might have been established by Washington. Also, wed had 12 years of Republican rule and there was a widespread sense of time for change. I was just in awe of people like that. Do you have any recollections or observations about the President in that environment? We did have goals. I mean, not to take any credit away from other players, you wouldnt want to do that Im sure, but there must have been some. So there wasnt all that much time, maybe ten days, twelve days, between opening the office, showing up down there and then having the Treasury Secretary and the rest of the members of the economic team chosen. He wouldnt call the others back; hed have me do that because when youre Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and some freshman Senator called you, you didnt tend to talk to him. I was there to the last day of the Carter Presidency, and all of a sudden we were able to negotiate the release of those hostages. Everybody gets a nametag, and theres the Secretary of the Treasury, the Deputy Secretary of this and Director of OMB, and youre all sitting around, a very staged setting. Sure, Greenspan was in favor of deficit reduction, so when the administration came forward with an actual deficit reduction plan, which, as we all know, was a bit unexpected, Greenspan supported it, testified for it and so forth. Bentsen and Dole were very close friends, which is a measure of the stature that Bentsen had. Alan Greenspan was on it; Simon was chair of it. Was there a group of people who were helping him on the policy side respective to economics? Gene Sperling was in it. No. The hearings ended around the fourth or fifth of August and it was now the seventeenth or something. As I recall the campaign of 1992, there were lots of policy debates amongst the Democrats. No, not at all. I didnt do any work on personnel until Secretary [Lloyd] Bentsen was designated Treasury Secretary. I think of people like [Harold] Carswell and [Clement] Haynsworth that Nixon appointed and who didnt make it, it was mostly because they were seen as inferior candidates. You see people scrambling to monopolize the left. So there was not a war of the type that has so often been written about, just not true. No voters will cast their votes, even two years from now, even in 94, one year from now, on the basis of my having voted against it. No, I dont remember that effort at all, so it must have been pretty quiet. Every imaginable issue arose and Clinton hit all those balls out of the park and it gave the American public a chance to see how astonishingly smart and deep this guy was. Its improved a lot since then, now become of course one of the leading universities in the country, but it was not at that time, in fairness. I mean, to give you an example, wed been in office I think several days, and the Sunday after the inauguration I was sitting at home in New York because my family hadnt moved yet. I cant think of anything you didnt ask me, or anything I didnt say that I would have liked to have said, so with that exception. I think it was serious as a political thing, meaning you had three candidates instead of two and of course, the dynamic was different. So were interested in hearing about. The first vote on one of Clintons issues was a defeat, which presaged a lot of the weakness that then afflicted him during 1993. The election took place on the first Tuesday of November. He should have taken it. I mean, theyre all just issuing healthcare plans right now and there are some important differences among them, but 99 percent of the primary voters will not know those differences. It doesnt make sense, it belies any grasp of history, and so forth. The President was in a tough spot because he was hearing from a lot of people that the effort was too ambitious, but on the other hand, Mrs. Clinton was in charge of it. Each day hed give a speech and mark off a day, counting down the days to the expiration of the statute of limitations and saying these people at the RTC damn well better be sure that justice is served, the Clintons arent off the hook. So it was a quick learning experience for Clinton. The process for conceiving it was a frail one, poor one. Because it promotes a lack of confidence in financial markets and, for that matter, a lack of confidence in the business community, a sense that that administration doesnt know what its doing. Well, not really. There was a lot of effort and a lot of meetings. Twofold. But he was at least alive. It was an astounding speech. They all came to the same conclusions. So its also part of the Treasury tradition to do it that way. So, for example, the partisanship in Washington hasnt particularly declined since President Clinton left office. I was on the board of the Childrens Television Workshop, now called the Sesame Workshop, the entity that produces Sesame Street and related childrens programming. Id had served before and seen how not to do it. Im not joking. He and Kerrey had a very close relationship. How difficult was it to raise money in the environment, Cuomo aside, just for somebody who had been a Governor of Arkansas in a campaign season when theres. But the next day, Monday, I was on a plane to Waco, Texas. I called him and said Id be interested in helping him in some form if there was a way to do that, and then one thing let to another and I got involved, not long thereafter, in his campaign, both from a fundraising point of view and from the point of view of economic policy and issue development. I would say it had to do with an overall perception that he was the most substantive and the best politician. I direct the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center. But what actually turned out to happen was that each Cabinet officer, or at least many of them, came up with a list of favorite initiatives they wanted. I dont know this, but I suspect that was decided largely between the President and Mrs. Clinton. You had made your choice to support him before it was clear that he was going to wow a lot of people in New York. Had there always been a sense on your part that your likely posting in the administration would be in Treasury or. And that was fairly late, right, when Bowles came in? My point is that if one was a Republican in 93, one could say, Okay, Im going to vote against this so Im not on record of favoring any kind of tax increase, and that protects me politically and if that works out, I dont lose anything, so Im politically immunized. You think that a lot of Republicans who didnt support it would say, Well, theres a little justice in the world because Bush 41 paid the price for having a compromise in 1990 that, along the lines of the 1993 bill, did help restore some fiscal discipline to the U.S. Less and less now that shes her own public figure, but thats her nature. I was in Tokyo with President Clinton, the Tokyo Economic Summit and Id made several trips to Tokyo paving the way for that. That was great. So this is the case where basically hes saying, My Presidency and this party are going to rise or fall based on whether we succeed in this or not. All types of dire predictions were put forward. In retrospect, a limited, very grudging change. I would say it was something like this. Well, it was just a strange evening. But, no, they couldnt have been more cooperative. Of course, by November 94, many of the benefits of this program had not yet evolved. I can recall that we had a fundraiser. No. That was on a Friday evening. Its interesting too at this very moment with her book having just come out to watch some of the tapes being played on television about some of her own moments. Lets hold off if we can just a couple of minutes before getting into the transition period and let me ask you a couple of questions about the campaign itself. So were in a partisan phase. So they came in and interviewed him. That was partly because Bentsen was a person who had never failed at anything. He was named the first week of December. There could be a lot of backsliding on that, well have to see. But in 1987, I think it was, the Democrats in this case, I must say, rewrote the rules and decided that ideology should be the grounds on which this was decided, and Mr. Bork may have had great credentials, may have been a scholar of great distinction but his ideology was unacceptable. I thought that was pretty funny. Some of the things on the wish list made a lot of sense, but some of them didnt. Last weekend, Roger Altman was back at his ranch in Wyomings Jackson Hole, looking tanned and relaxed, entertaining friends like White House chief economist How early were you beginning to get a sense that the Republicans were going to be an historically difficult problem for this President? Could you tell us what your portfolio was within Treasury and what your primary responsibilities were? The assessment was correct because, I cant recall the size of the economy then, but today it is about $10.7 trillion. Yes, Clinton was gregarious, obviously bright. Here we are in June 2003 and the election as we all know is November 04, so its 16 months or so Then when Ross Perot entereddeficit reduction was a theme of the [Paul] Tsongas campaign if I remember correctly; then later Ross Perot, entitlement reform, whatever that might mean; free trade and issues of economic relations with Japan; and I think one of the candidates[Bob] Kerrey?had a health insurance plank, is that right? I dont think anybody during the campaign expected that Clinton would turn out to be the deficit hawk that he did. He was very disciplined and he went to bed at a certain time and he went home. But I remember we went to Little Rock. It is high, because the toll it takes on your life is high and you either run out of money or you just burn yourself out, or you get separated from your family, or whatever it is. Its a strong field. Thomas Jefferson is under-appreciated as a President. But I didnt know where the President was on NAFTA. So there were a couple of weeks of high anxiety, maybe more than that, maybe everybody was in a state of anxiety between the election and yes, it wasnt at all clear who the Secretary of Treasury would be. Healthcare got the nod. Of course, the fact of a summit means you have to have some agreement, and we had an agreement. What Im interested in is when the man who was elected to the Presidency decided on his course of action in some of these policy areas. You know, you call in for five minutes apiece and theyre all lined up. Not necessarily. The meetings became sort of a phenomenon and some people thought they were great because they were so inclusive and here we were having opportunities to spend hours with the President. Having watched very carefully what Bob Carswell, who served for three plus years of the four Carter years as Deputy Secretary, did in that role, and that was actually rather different than my role. Yes. I then had the brilliant ideaIm saying this, obviously sarcastically, that I should inform the White House what those procedural alternatives were. Id become a pretty active Democrat in New York, particularly active by standards of Wall Street, which still had relatively few visible Democrats in its midst. Now we became aware pretty early that there were some real problems with this proposal. I went straight down to Washington and moved in, and I was there on the day the office opened, as were many other people. Greenspan sat next to Mrs. Clinton. Then late one afternoon, early evening I guess, 7 oclock, in the transition office in Washington, Warren Christopher called me. No, I did not. No, I had very little contact with Mr. Clinton for roughly 20 years after leaving. Maybe there was, I wasnt privy to that or exposed to that. Nobody said to me, Hes there. And then, of course, the political people in the White House: George Stephanopoulos of course, and others in the White House. There was a stimulus package that dwindled, right? Did you do any traveling with Clinton on the campaign around New York or outside of New York? Its actually enjoyable, its fun. Remember, President Clintons first initiative, the stimulus plan, was defeated. You didnt need to be a management consultant to see they werent well organized. Im thinking of what historians will say. I cant recall what year it was but it was in the late 80s, and now its seven or eight thousand, actually up toward nine, but has more or less slid ever since. For example, keeping its currency weak, not taking some of the steps to improve domestic demand such that Japan could become a stronger force for imports into Japan, ironically some of the same issues that are just as present today. Here we are in June 2003 and the election as we all know is November 04, so its 16 months or so before the election, 17 months, and right now of course, the campaign among the Democratic aspirants for the nomination is hot, full-bore, and has been for several months. No, it was not at all. Sure. Roger Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, the most active independent investment bank in the world today. Of course that depends on the moment in question. The contrast between Chicago, which was in an uproar at the time, and Georgetown couldnt have been more vivid. I can remember feeling very chastened because he talked about how many children we were helping and how many families we were helping and I chose to try to makejust in the spirit of celebration, a few jokes. I dont know whether his Presidency will be seen as one of the most important or transformative in American history. Sure. The hearings process really kind of kicks it off. By that time, Clinton had his idea of the middle-class tax cut, and he had his idea of cutting the deficit in half during his first term, I think it was. I hadnt been parachuted in from some distant spot without any such relations. In 1991 it was not organized. I think less well than he was treated while he was in office. And the difficulty became quickly evident once the program was laid out. I disagree that hes under-appreciated. Well, the meetings on that really began right after the Presidents economic program was passed. You say you knew Rubin well, but did you have a sense that in the other places where economic policy-making is made there was ever any tension over this kind of an arrangement? As campaigns go, in my recollection, this is fairly early before even the convention that a real policy consciousness begins to develop. But everybody felt such a part of it because they were sitting right there. The arrangements, as far as the White House, how it passes operation, and the Treasury operationshould that be seen as well coordinated, or is it difficult to coordinate? Yes, that was bad advice. I attended Georgetown University and I was a year ahead of him. So Japan arguably has been in a 12- or 14-year slump, but at that time the weakness in the Japanese economy was seen as just cyclical, not structural. We had a chat; we had a nice time. Whether you had disagreements with him or not, or felt warmly or less warmly toward him or not, he gave you the opportunity to do it, whether youre a Cabinet officer or anybody else. If you go to Monticello, to his actual tombstone, then you know that he drafted his own epitaph: Governor of Virginia, founder of the University of Virginia, and author of the Declaration of Independence. Yes, actually there was a big debate about healthcare, welfare reform, and NAFTA. You were responsible for organizing the war room. How are people in the future to understand why this became such a polarized situation with Congress? It used to be, I believe, that they were graded on grounds of competent scholarship and so forth. I remember sitting there, thinking to myself, This guy just did something that I could no more imagine myself capable of doing than I could jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. Of course, any situation like that always has its humor. But my role was shaped largely by two things: one, Bentsen and what Bentsen wanted; and two, the fact that I had a reasonably close relationship with the White House. A little bit. But all Im trying to say is if you look at Lloyd Bentsens background, Rob Rubins background, and even to a much lesser extent my background, we knew about monetary policy and we knew about the role of the Fed. For one reason or other, Clinton developed some very powerful antagonists in the press, most notably Howell Raines of the New York Times editorial page, and the New York Times treatment of Clinton became a virtual industry unto itself. It should have been, I suppose, more evident at the time, but such things never are. No, he was working the Hill like everyone else, but he was important. None of the aspects of her role bothered me at all. But for reasons I dont fully understand, it goes in cycles, and we came into office at a time when an up cycle so to speak on partisanship was asserting itself. Now John Snow didnt learn that, hed never been there before and so forth and so on, whatever excuse fits him. He knew what the House would do. Did you stay in Little Rock for a while afterward? I just remember that being contemporaneous with the real beginning of an organized effort here. I really believe it was that day that his view changed. I dont think this is what it really says, but I suppose in the distant lens of history, Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War. That was not well known to me at the time. Altman Thats true, yes. I had really not fully ever grasped from my Wall Street days, that there was a great big regulatory side to it including enforcement side, where the RTC was also charged with pursuing investigations against former thrift officials and ultimately prosecuting them if circumstances warranted. They werent just opponents, they were angry and intense opponents and vitriolic opponents. Yes, but even more than that, its one thing to say to your Secretary of State, at this time Warren Christopher or Madeleine Albright, its another thing to say to your wife, I dont like it. Did it come out of Arkansas? He remained in those positions until Lehman was sold. Were still in the transition period, and now may be the appropriate time to talk about the process by which deficit reduction becomes a clear priority item over some of the other things that were talked about during the course of the campaign. In fact, it was six months before. During the Ford administration they had something called the Economic Policy Board I believe it was, EPB and Bill Simon as Secretary of Treasury was the head of the board and it met actually every morning in the White House. I think if Edmund Morris were writing with that skill about the Clinton years, hed have a whole chapter on the vote on this plan. Now streaming on: Powered by Yes, here in New York. That was a period during which [Boris] Yeltsin was just coming onto the stage. How did the second transition compare with that first one in terms of cooperativeness, in terms of being organized and. I mean, Republicans are opposing it because its tax and spend, the President is upset about it because its Wall Street economics. I divided my time between the transition office and the Treasury. So it was just a very unusual evening. He gave the best speech I, at least to that point, had ever heard him give, and I think almost everyone in the administration who was in the room felt the same way. But in any event, what gets discussed most in the campaign historically may or may not be the first or second major initiative that comes from the new President. Mike Blumenthal, the first Secretary of the Treasury, knew, but he didnt have a close relationship with Carter. Can you tell us about how that unfolded, your perceptions of Mrs. Clintons role in all of this? I really think its just that basic. By continuing to browse, you agree to the use of Evercore's cookies. He was shot eight times, mostly in the chest. After all, thered been only two Democratic Presidents in the last 25 or 30 years and theyd both been southern Governors. He has difficulty speaking. Our labor leadership did not want that, especially of course, the Teamsters. Bentsen could tell you, within 4 percent accuracy, what was going to happen to every one of these bills. Was this a group of people that you primarily put together, or is it bits and pieces of people that the Clintons had known. So that was the revelation, so to speak, that occurred that day. His popularity had sunk to low levels. Fifty Republicans had announced their opposition, 49 Democrats had announced their support, and Bob Kerrey was strolling around, going to the movies, which is what he was doing. Everything imaginable. I think so, yes. I mean, I just thought he was such a hero. But in any event, there I was, and this guy, as I say, was a master of the game. Before we come back to this, I want to pose one question and that is about the Presidents style when he was working the phones with members of the House. Its curious to me, but thats how it worked. I wasnt involved in any of the delegate-related strategies, no. At my sons school, on the floor where the history department is, each President gets a little tiny picture and about two lines. Carter, whos a wonderful man, God knows, however is very rigid. In this case it was well coordinated because Howard Paster was really excellent at his job. These cookies do not store any information that directly identifies you. Remember, I was there during the 1963-67 period. The Putting People First document, is it fair to characterize that as the menu choices that the administration was going to be making when it took office, but that there was not a great deal of attention at this point on priorities from among the elements in the menu? But why was it bloodless? Then Marjorie made her famous walk to the well, with the Republicans serenading her, Bye, Bye Marjorie, but if theres a more dramatic moment that one can have in government service, at least if youre working in some sort of economic capacity, I cant think of it. I can even imagine an independent counsel of some kind being unlikely, but not impossible, designated in the whole weapons of mass destruction issue. Were you involved in that effort? I mean, not one encounter, until the early to mid 80s when I was quite involved in various aspects of the Democratic Party and there were a few forums at various places that I would attend and I would occasionally run into him. He had a great time. So I had that meeting with Clinton. Many people consider him, many of his opponents considered him to be setting new heights of insincerity and to have misrepresented a lot of his past. In fact, Bernard and his late partner, George Katz, were both involved. He told me that at the very beginning. The period during which Bentsens views werent treated with quite enough respect was a very short one. But a very useful one. He didnt say so, but supposedly he never does. Any particular memories from that successful trip? Well, if you were to ask me for a moment when looking back on it, one could perhaps see that we were moving into a new period of partisanship, I would have chosen instead the [Robert] Bork battle, which I think changed quite dramatically the whole process on Supreme Court nominations and the grounds on which they were debated. But you know, theres a real sense of the torch passing and history, and one had to be struck, even though Id been involved with Clinton from mid 91, by the youth and vigor that Clinton and Gore exuded, and Ive always personally liked the south, so I enjoyed being there, so I did go. We were very explicit. Because Clinton very shrewdly realized the respective strengths of Bentsen and Rubin and put each in the right job. So hes the one who asked you to serve in that position, not Clinton. Can you walk us through that? I want to be sure that there is a clear picture of that because he cant offer it himself. Altman gave Youre working on prospective personnel issues? I think its wrong from a policy point of view. It just depended on the size of the concession. Then of course, the Senate voted the next day and we only had 49 votes that we knew about and Senator Bob Kerrey was the undecided vote, the only one left. 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