Youre referring to the environmental and labor side issues. But Clinton did care quite a bit about it. Certainly on free trade you would say that there was a consistency in his rhetoric during the campaign and the behavior of the administration after he was elected. Of course I would say were not proposing to take over the healthcare system. I recall a large event, right after New Years, the fourth of January I believe, in 92, that I organized at their request, which was just simply to have a large number of people listen to Clinton give a speech. We know youre extremely busy. He just knew how it worked. 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. But I think one misunderstood aspect of his embracing NAFTA wasat that point he was being widely criticized for lacking in principle, lacking in conviction, a weathervane all over the place politically. I had known him just slightly. Whenever the times got tough or after they left or whatever it was, I think a lot of people who left the Clinton administration lowered themselves by their own behavior in terms of lesser loyalty than they should have had. In the early period, there was a lot of discussion of broad strategy, how to create support for deficit reduction as a whole, how to talk about the program, what type of interest groups we needed to particularly work with and work on. There are many people in the administration who dont like the welfare reform that was ultimately signed, believed that Clinton ultimately turned centrist on the issue and anybody could have done that and once you did it as a Democratic President, you were going to have welfare reform. He was very impressive. It begins I think with the economic and fiscal circumstances that the administration faced, and two in particular. That was the moment, that day. I think Clinton will come out pretty well. He must have had enough of a political antenna to realize this was going to be a tough call in a Democratic constituency in Pennsylvania or Michigan. I think it did. Can you talk about Perots influence on the campaign? If nobody else has any more questions about that, the other trade issue that you were greatly involved with that we touched on only once or twice has been Japan. Eventually they did, but it wasnt because of this agreement, big macro forces had them do it. Then I would have discussions with Clinton, usually on the fly, about certain economic issues I thought were important. Was there a representative of the campaign. Bentsen also wanted the resignation of the Treasury General Counsel, who resigned too. Well, after the Presidents unveiling and before the war room, this pre-war room effort at selling, how was that coordinated? So if you want to call it the politics of the economy, The labor unions were overwhelmingly opposed. Now remember, Clinton had said he was going to cut the deficit in half. 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. He didnt say so, but supposedly he never does. And the next point I want to make is, there was a fateful meeting, like most of these things, very well chronicled now, in Little Rock, up at the transition, the economic team, lasted many hours, very organized meeting in the sense that it had a set of presentations and then a broad discussion. They began to mount quite a drumbeat of Republican outcry to the effect that it was the responsibility of the RTC to unilaterally extend that statute of limitations on the theory that it would be wrong to let the Clintons off the hook, and the RTC had the power to do that. Im not sure that was what they originally intended, I suppose it was, but I wasnt involved in the planning of the summit, I just went to it and had a role on one of the panels and sat around for a couple of days, really. And I also think that theres a certain sense of loyalty among the people that are currently serving in this administration, which is more in keeping with tradition, than the Clinton folks, or many of them I should say, brought to it. Now a good deal of it was also formulated pre-election, but if I had to choose between the two, which period played the bigger role, the transition period or the pre-election period, I would say the transition period. Georgetown was a semi-serious school. Was it defined initially as a Democratic Party issue and Republicans were cut out, or how did that happen? I, and quite a few other people, had dinner with him, quite a few meaning 15 or so. Some of the cookies we use are essential for parts of the website to operate and cannot be switched off in our systems. Of course. So I said, Well then, thats the course Im going to take. You look at the turnover that she hador in her case did not haveon her staff, and the turnover that he had. I have to tell my most famous Bentsen story because it really illustrates what an extraordinary person Bentsen was. Theres a time lag between taking painful steps to do something with the deficit and getting some response in the. Its curious to me, but thats how it worked. from Georgetown University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. I never heard of them. The President decided it, but Mack McLarty actually called me. No. We were the easy solution for the press. He had good relations with certain members of Congress, and we needed that. So you wouldnt have had any involvement on Capitol Hill or anything like that at the time? Im not an economist, so maybe Im making a bad assumption here, but was there a discussion at this time about when you could start feeling some benefits from this pain that you were asking the President to accept at a fairly early stage in his Presidency? No, I dont remember that effort at all, so it must have been pretty quiet. Will policy differences be the reason that candidate X or candidate Y emerges with the nomination? But I think if you study American history and you look at any number of earlier periods, the attacks on Abraham Lincoln for example comes to mind, the Andrew Jackson period, such extreme partisanship is common in American history. The political process requires an outcome. Well, yes, Carter tried a version of that. WebKathryn Reed Altman and Roger Altman attend State of the Union Dinner at The Re-Opening of the Plaza Hotel Ballroom on January 28, 2008 in New York Roger Altman and Mayor Michael Bloomberg attend THIRTEEN and WLIW 21 Annual Gala Salute at Gotham Hall on April 30, 2007 in New York City. I did too. So there was a rather constant process of monitoring, assessing, adjusting, going on that way. Do you recall at what point you felt that there was some momentum being reestablished? 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. But I interpreted that to mean, Maybe you should, because I felt that if he thought I shouldnt, hed say so. You never saw, one time, Bob Rubin do that, not one time, after he left. 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. But anyway, he was quite a character. Hes the first guy who stepped in defeated. Could be. I think everybody has a different calculation. I dont really think Whitewater, at least this part of it, was terribly different from some of the other such situations that weve all seen, whether its the John Tower hearings or its Bert Lance or whatever it is. He knew what the House would do. It was excellent. So the Carter White House was a bit at seavisvis the Federal Reserve and its role, how to relate to it. It was a successful fundraiser. You asked me about Bentsen because of his unavailability. People have made that mistake and theyve suffered from it. Hundreds of meetings over many months, also similar to those original meetings, too many people, too long, too many people talking and so forth. She herself has expressed regret over them. As I recall, Al Gore wanted it, cared a great deal about it, to some considerable degree got his way on it. But that battle was resolved in favor of the revolution, the most sweeping alternative, and I dont really have a lot to add beyond whats been written. First of all, the Clinton White House wasnt really oriented to that. Every time they had a new Prime Minister, we had a new set of characters. Richard Nixon resigned from office. I spoke in this wonderful old hall, in the legislative building, legislative chamber, it was great. Was it his personality? Can you tell us about that? There was a whole bunch of work going on on that but I was completely preoccupied with the Presidents economic program and trying to get it passed, not just during the war room period but before that. Of course, there was Leon Panetta, and Bob Rubin and Lloyd Bentsen, Alice Rivlin, Laura Tyson, myself, Gene Sperling, those were really the main members. As everybody knows, ultimately there was not a single Republican vote cast for it, neither in the House nor the Senate. Did you have close relations with people in Cuomos operation, because I think, at least in the early stages, there was still a consideration that he might come out? They had a very unsuccessful discussion, which resulted in name calling and cursing. We went back to square one. Im not joking. Anyway, that was the high point, by far, of my own service, both in terms of the drama and the sense of having contributed something important. 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. But a very useful one. Secretary Bentsen was too important and had other things to do than to go down to Waco, Texas, and try to figure out what was going on there. and Lloyd would say, I wouldnt do it, Mr. President, or I would do it. I think Clinton recognized that, by virtue of his being an outsider in Washingtonhe never served in Washingtonhe needed a link to the Congress, a really superb link, of the type that Bentsen afforded, especially since Clintons first priorities were economics.The Senate Finance Committee was going to be, more than any other single place, where the action was. Roger Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, the most active independent investment bank in the world today. Then we ended up for some strange set of reasons having a giant turnout and he wowed them. For the first part of the Clinton years, Arthur Burns was famously mystical, quite like Greenspan. Clinton was offered a compromise by Senators [John] Breaux and [David] Boren. Everyone understood there was a lag factor. I think the Japanese have ultimately realized its in their own interests to make a lot of these changes. The Clinton years were not in any respect unique from that point of view, but that partisanship for some reason or other seems to go in cycles and we just happen to come into office at a time when the cycle was moving up in terms of the scale of partisanship. and the period of time during whichtheres a window during which it had to be submitted for a vote. In other words, all the work that goes in before its actually sent to the Hill. He should have taken it. He must have wondered what he was doing. So by the time I had to do it again I wasnt particularly concerned. That they felt that people who had served the President. That ostracism certainly hasnt afflicted the Clinton alumni. How are people in the future to understand why this became such a polarized situation with Congress? Were there follow-up meetings with Japan that you were involved in after the summit? There were those who feltI would put Bob Reich at the top of the listwho felt the most important thing was to do a big stimulus program involving a lot of spending initiatives. He loved policy. I said I would and we went forward. Was there anything that particularly distinguished this campaign from what youd seen in these other instances thats noteworthy? You say he didnt inspire fierce loyalty amongst a lot of his subordinates, but interestingly, I think a lot of the senior Cabinet members lasted a long time, I mean, they stayed for muchDonna Shalala was Secretary for eight years, Rubin was in for a long time, given the fact that his family didnt move to Washington. It wasnt difficult at all because Cuomo was a polarizing figure. The number of possible votes at that stage had dwindled down to a tiny number, votes that were undecided. Tulip Brenner (Carol Burnett) tells off her sister-in-law (Peggy Ann Garner) in Robert Altman's "A Wedding." There was no real reason for that, it was just fate, happenstance, just the case that not many of them did. Youve been good to give us so much time. The Republicans in the Senate especially, led by Senator [Alfonse] DAmato who was Chairman of the Banking Committeeno, he was ranking minority member, became Chairman after the election of 94. He is a trustee of MIT and serves on its Governance Committee. Carter had the famous $50 rebate, which became the object of much derision ultimately. 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. I want to ask you a general question since youve raised the Carter precedent again here.And that is, we get the perception in talking with some people that there was a conscious effort on the part of senior-most advisors to President Clinton not to reach out and rely on a lot of people that had Carter-era experience in the Presidency. And there were obviously a whole host of people who were against it from day one and you werent going to change anybodys mind in the latter category. If anything comes to mind that we havent talked about, that youd like to have included. Lets face it, NAFTA has worked. Less and less now that shes her own public figure, but thats her nature. This giant controversy erupted over that. There have been a lot of great American Presidents. Im an economist in the Brookings Institution in Washington. 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. So not long after arriving in the new offices, which were over there on Vermont Avenue, I remember that, I went over to the Treasury and met with Secretary [Nicholas] Brady and the Deputy Secretary, very nice manname escapes me at the momentand began to debrief the senior members of the department. I respected him, but I never identified with him and I didnt see him being a successful Democratic nominee. By that late stage of the budget battle, all the concessions and fine-tuning that could be made to the bill had already been done, so you had a package at that point that wasnt going to be reopened. Having said that, I dont believe that affected the partisan approach to it. If you think about who are almost universally considered the three or four greatest American Presidents, they all faced enormous crises, of course Lincoln, [George] Washington, FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] and so forth, and Clinton didnt. I had a certain background but it didnt include experiences like that. No one thought on the morning of the election that Clinton was going to lose and Bush was going to win. Or was it just that you were persuaded that he was going to be a great candidate? Clinton made an error, didnt take it. You didnt have to spend much time around them to see this. Concessions involving individual members of Congress could often be done at a lower level, depending on the magnitude of the concession. For example, a year later, the fall following my graduation, I attended the University of Chicago, which was perhaps more than any other university, except the University of Wisconsin, the center of SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] activity. Mr. Clinton became aware of that. But there was a discontinuity between the campaign and the administration, In this respect exactly right. Youve had Chiefs of Staff, Don Regan comes to mind, who see themselves as all-powerful and go too far to one end of the spectrum, and youve had others like Mack, who are too deferential and too averse to confrontation and go too far in the other direction. If were talking about 1991, I think his ideas were in formation. We didnt spend a tremendous amount of time talking about, If we do this, Greenspan will do that. You might call it something different. You had some experience with Japan before? I made two trips to Little Rock. She may have had a lot of influence on it, but I didnt see her. Clinton, as I mentioned before, held a series of marathon meetings, I recall that virtually all of them were on the Roosevelt Room, and they went on for four, five, six, seven hours, talking about possible elements of the economic program. If Whitewater occurred today or there was some like set of issues surrounding President Bush and his past, I dont think thered be a single hearing about it. A fairly major effort went into that, which I was part of. Youd suggested earlier that a National Economic Council wasnt anything that was a particularly major innovation. 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. I was given an office over in the Treasury. They werent just opponents, they were angry and intense opponents and vitriolic opponents. But the main argument was economic. I thought maybe we should step back and let you give us a more organized picture of what it is that you were doing with respect to U.S.-Japanese relations. 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. But anyway, in retrospect it was a very bad idea. Now streaming on: Powered by I think hes deeply appreciated. Help us understand why he would elect to move NAFTA at this point? 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. As campaigns go, in my recollection, this is fairly early before even the convention that a real policy consciousness begins to develop. But I would also say he contributed to his own under-appreciation. One of the things that you mentioned that was in your portfolio was selling the budget package. I think the days for that have largely passed, I dont think members of Congress care much about that. So that went on with mounting intensity over a series of months after the President had actually laid it out. So the swing votes were the object of our attention. But youd been doing transition work for a month. That was the logical place because I served there before. There are some very famous stories about Bentsens war experience. Can you walk us through that? Well, I dont think theyd like it. We touched on this at a couple of points but never directly asked you whether you thought the President. I could have mentioned a lot of other people, but Im just saying, I dont think that when President [George W.] BushI dont think that as people leave the Bush administration, theyre going to do that. Was there a perceivable influence from your perspective on having Perot in the campaign, making the deficit an issue from his vantage point? I worked in the White House another three or four months, worked on, for example, the bailout of Washington, D.C., and then the passage of the new control board type legislation and then my kids got out of school in June. Id have to do a little homework. For example, the Btu tax and the raising of the highest rate, highest bracket. But in any event, it hasnt ended with President Clintons leaving. He moved it to the center, made it the party of fiscal responsibilitywhoever would have believed that?and enabled the party to shed much of its old baggage. Obviously Sam Rayburn. Had it always been assumed that Rubin would take that position? Education might be something in terms of opening. But, I can tell youa bit of a digression. Her staff, and quite a bit at seavisvis the Federal Reserve and its role, how was that?! 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