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. Now John Snow didnt learn that, hed never been there before and so forth and so on, whatever excuse fits him. I hadnt been parachuted in from some distant spot without any such relations. In all aspects? Then we put on our battle armor and went back into battle. The only way he saved his life was to throw himself off the roof after hed been shot several times. Altman made a point to carry shoes as tiny as size 5 and mammoth as size 20, with widths ranging from super skinny AAAA to 6E and kept 23 basement storage Clinton chose in Bentsen, with the possible exception of [Robert] Dole, who obviously wasnt a candidate for this, the most experienced person in the entire United States Congress. I went to Wall Street after the University of Chicago, and then after seven years on Wall Street, I went into the [Jimmy] Carter administration as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. He told me that at the very beginning. Nineteen sixty-seven to sixty-eight, of course, were peak years in terms of the Vietnam War and antiwar activism, but Georgetown was not at all in the center of that. So it became effectively a simultaneous multilateral and bilateral summit because it became the setting for Clintons direct discussions with the Japanese Prime Minister. Those things were at a peak in 94, just at the time healthcare was on the table. He earned an A.B. NAFTA has been successful. Everyone understood there was a lag factor. We still joke about that today. It was a very costly enterprise upfront and, as I recall from testimony we had from others, there was a big problem in that whatever savings would have been recorded as a part of this enterprise had actually been absorbed into the earlier budget deal. You see a lot of candidates you know arent going to work that way. So heres a person who knew how to manage himself. So I did a lot of work representing the Treasury on any number of issues in the White House councils of deliberation. It was not an accident that he did that. I went back to the airport in Austin, reported that to Warren Christopher, and I think we were all announced within a week. The next thing is a free-trade agreement, which I think the President could have dodged, he didnt have to go all out on that. There was also a very memorable event that was held in the East Room of the White House, and recall that within a week or two of this event, Clintons own position on NAFTA was still up in the air. So it could be revived again tomorrow. One was in connection with Putting People First, when we had the wonderful experience of taking a cab from the Little Rock airport and having the cab driver slow down and practically come to a stop for a second, and excitedly point out to us Gennifer Flowers apartment building. Im not sure it makes entire sense, however, to judge or to assess a Presidents contribution by the standard of those who are given, in effect, a free gift of power to deal with a crisis. But its interesting to put it into perspective. Bentsen could tell you, within 4 percent accuracy, what was going to happen to every one of these bills. That is foolish because history provides lessons on these matters. Im very fond of her, extremely fond of her, and it was, Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. [Mary Todd] Lincoln? That day I knew we were headed for defeat. But in any event, the cooperation in both cases was optimal. Theodore Roosevelts name comes up occasionally as somebody that even Clinton himself had at least a temporary fixation on when he was evidently considering his own legacy as some one who took a progressive era, being a kind of rough approximation to the. I thought, All right, well get half a loaf. Did that debate begin as early as August? You had three candidates on the stage during the debates and so forth. But it was quite obvious that wed lost the battle. I dont think anybody during the campaign expected that Clinton would turn out to be the deficit hawk that he did. I said to him, If I should resign, then thats what I want to do. The President said to me at one moment when we were alone, and with great heat, he said to me, Roger, you see, theres no constituency at all for Wall Street economics, which is how he viewed his plan, that hed sold himself to Wall Street and you see theres no constituency for that because were about to lose. Today you have Governor [Howard] Dean, Congressman [Dick] Gephardt, for instance. I think it was over two days. She didnt cast it because of me, but it just became obvious to me in that conversation that she was very reluctant to cast that vote. So I wasnt sure what was going to happen, but there was no one in the field that was suddenly squashing everyone else including Clinton. But I was to be sure, no matter what they asked me, guns? I was in Tokyo, asleep, so I was a bit taken aback. So the Carter White House was a bit at seavisvis the Federal Reserve and its role, how to relate to it. Okay, the election occurred and, for reasons Ive never fully understood, Alice Rivlin and I were the first two to go down to see Clinton, of those he was looking at for appointment purposes. So monetary policy has gone from being considerably more powerful than fiscal policy in 93, to being the only policy in town in 2003. That was great. I can tell you without any fear of contradiction that anyone who makes either of those mistakes, and I can think of others, will ultimately rue the day that he made them. Bentsen really respected Dole. Clinton, as we all know, is very open, but also a very undisciplined guy. So, as always happens, the policy apparatus was being built and the policy process was being deepened and becoming more sophisticated as the entire campaign evolved. Born on April 2, 1946 in United States of America, Roger Altman started his career as Financial professional . As has been, as I said, so widely chronicled, the focus was on the economy because the economy was sluggish, in a recessionary state. It just depended on the size of the concession. The Senate Finance Committee is the most powerful committee, Bentsen had been chairman for quite a few years, was seen universally as a very effective, powerful chairman. It was very effective because it was a group of roughly 20-25 people, working literally 19-20 hours a day with only one mission, and that mission was to get this bill passed. So the vote ended, Senate vote I mean, and we had that celebration. Youre referring to the environmental and labor side issues. But the two major currency accords, the Plaza Accord and the Louvre Accord, were done in times of crisis in the foreign exchange markets. I was the class of 1967 and he was the class of 1968. 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. Because Clinton very shrewdly realized the respective strengths of Bentsen and Rubin and put each in the right job. A lot of people didnt realize and I didnt entirely realize the regulatory responsibilities of the RTC at the time. Then later in the process I was asked if I would go do a war room for healthcare of the type we did for the budget. The office on Vermont Avenue probably opened between two and three weeks thereafter, lets say, picking a time, the 25th of November, just guessing, 20th to 25th. That was not well known to me at the time. No. Also fifth, to some degree, Alan Greenspan weighed in, and a view developed that if we tightened fiscal policy, there would be the opportunity to loosen monetary policy. If you read Putting People First, first of all it was domestic policy as a whole, it was not just economic policy. Nobody said to me, Hes there. So obviously by inauguration day hed largely assimilated them. Yes, actually there was a big debate about healthcare, welfare reform, and NAFTA. The hearings process really kind of kicks it off. I was the senior Treasury person day-in, day-out on the major healthcare task force that Mrs. Clinton herself chaired. You would have thought Senator Bentsen would have felt that way also, unless there was an assumption that this was literally going to be a few weeks time. Even at the end of 91 it was small and relatively unformed. Rubin was well known as an economic conservative, and Bentsen, of course, had a very long legislative record, which was in the same direction. I went and visited the injured agents in the hospital. While at the University, You were responsible for organizing the war room. There just wasnt a candidate who had the capability to do that. I might have a point of view about what those ought to be based on certain inputs I was receiving directly from the Hill and we need to work more on this or that. It was absolutely breathtaking, profoundly dramatic and unforgettable, absolutely unforgettable. So Ira was, to some degree, as youve read thousands of times, off in the corner doing this whole plan. Then Clinton, as I mentioned, this one big event in January of 92Clinton was great on his feet. 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. So I think you had a President who was seen as very slickand he had that reputation before he became Presidentand then this upsurge in partisanship generally. I was involved in the Carter campaign in 1976 and the Mondale campaign in 84, [Michael] Dukakis in 88, Clinton, now Im involved again this time, and, knowing that, I never met anyone who had the appetite for policy itself that Clinton did. We touched on this at a couple of points but never directly asked you whether you thought the President. I can vote against it, tell my constituents Ill never support a tax increase. [laughter]. My own view on that is that American history is filled with examples of severe and indeed brutal partisanship. I mean, it was a larger package as it was originally conceived and then. If anything comes to mind that we havent talked about, that youd like to have included. But in any event, it hasnt ended with President Clintons leaving. Phil Gramm, Ill never forget, predicted that it would usher in a new depressionI mean depression, not recession. Theres some story that he demanded a commission on entitlement reform as a price. The reason it didnt succeed a lot more than that is because its really macro factors that drive this. Those are my exact words. I think at the Pond House meetings there were also some of the Congressional leaders, werent there? This is a bit of an anecdote, but of course Joel Klein served in the Clinton administration. 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. But Clinton really got into it. Carter had his famous Pond House meetings, and I went to a couple of those. You sit down with the leaders of your own party in the Congress, ultimately with the entire leadership, and then you learn a little bit about the realities that you face from the legislative point of view. So he was frantically calling members of Congress as various requests came in for him to do so. I think the answer to your question was, Yes, it was, but the RTC was charged with the responsibility of cleaning up all S and Ls [Savings and Loans]. There were some folks from the White House Press Secretarys office who were in it. For the first part of the Clinton years, Arthur Burns was famously mystical, quite like Greenspan. Everyone was thinking about one thing and not expressing it. You didnt have to spend much time around them to see this. It traces to Clintons legendary wonkishness. No, he doesnt, not in terms of the way I would define close friends, genuine friends. I mean, Republicans are opposing it because its tax and spend, the President is upset about it because its Wall Street economics. Thats a different issue. 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. and I said, I just want to serve.Im not going to give you a speech about why I should be Secretary of the Treasury. I do recall some rushed discussions at the very end about what we do now and how we flesh out his policies, and I can recall talking to George Stephanopoulos the morning the convention ended about certain steps we were going to take now in terms of getting better organized on policy development and issues. Again, I had the benefit of Lloyd Bentsens views. It was killed when Senator [Donald] Riegle, the chairman of the Banking Committee, announced that he would oppose it, so that was the end of that. He said, I know this will be hard, but I think I can get those folks. Once again, were grateful for your time. Web(Studio: Charles Gibson) Earlier interview held with Evercore Partners Roger Altman about the House vote and the market reaction. And every day I would speak to Bentsen about it. Yes. Yes, but the independent counsel is not a Clinton-era novelty. What external factors were at work here? So that, despite the extraordinary achievement it really was, I think may be seen by history as a small achievement. In other words a handful of conservative Democrats whose votes we had to have because we had no Republican votes. When you say the coordinator, you mean of the Presidents message? Ive been struck on several occasions in response to questions, youve referred to historical patterns and trends. I wouldnt necessarily accept that. I got involved in certain aspects of preparing it, editing it, fine-tuning it, I recall that. Did it succeed? I cant cite the examples that I can cite about the National Economic Council, because I studied that for Clinton, but I doubt it. It was a mixture of people and some of the names I recall of course were George Stephanopoulos and Gene Sperling, Bob Rubin, Bob Reich, Rob Shapiro, myself. I dont think its wholly right becauseand this may sound strange coming from mePresident Reagan I think will be seen very favorably by historians, mostly because hell be seen as the man who ended the Cold War, and Reagan didnt have to take the position of aggressive anti-Soviet behavior, but he did. Sure. I didnt devise them on my own. There was. It was a bit of a love fest. It wasnt difficult at all because Cuomo was a polarizing figure. No, not at all. The New York Times put it on the front page and this giant controversy erupted. 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. But the main argument was economic. These cookies do not store any information that directly identifies you. I wasnt there because I was an expert in international finance. Remember, President Clintons first initiative, the stimulus plan, was defeated. It was going to be a different kind of animal. It is especially important then for the people who worked with him to give us reflections on his role. That wasnt a very long meeting. The first thing that we typically do is a quick voice identification so that the transcriptionist will know whos talking at any given time.Im Russell Riley, the project leader for the Clinton Presidential History Project. I worked in the White House. Who was the coordinator, if any, in the first follow up? That was partly because Bentsen was a person who had never failed at anything. At the time we were working on it there was a sense on the Japanese side that it was a zero-sum game. The Federal Government doesnt have much of a role in education. A lot of funny things were happening. WebRoger Ebert March 07, 1978. But I only began to spend heavy time on that after the August passage of the Presidents economic program. Once she was put in charge of it, it obviously had tremendous internal focus. But, you know, its history, its participating right there in the actual, critical moment of history, and the sense of participating is very uplifting. At this point youre working on policy questions primarily? That ostracism certainly hasnt afflicted the Clinton alumni. It turned out to be the equivalent of walking the plank. 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