WebBy tlp333 @ 2008-03-23 21:45:51. Thats one where the Federal role is much bigger and one of the things we didnt discuss is why the administration did not latch onto that early on, even though the President was on the populist side of reform. 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. There could be a lot of backsliding on that, well have to see. But also the role of the media had been changing a lot and that role I think manifested itself very vividly in the Clinton years. Did you keep up with him when your paths parted? This goes back to that question about the interim between the pain and the payoff. Well, I dont think theyd like it. Youd worked in a couple of campaigns before this one, or youd been involved in campaigns. I have to tell my most famous Bentsen story because it really illustrates what an extraordinary person Bentsen was. I did too. I spoke to the Oklahoma state legislature. It wasnt evident to me the day after New Hampshire that he had recovered from it. Then he asked me to begin to work on certain personnelpresent him possible choices for the senior jobs in the department. Then, just after the Senate vote, everyone gathered in the Roosevelt Room, there was quite a celebration, really a quite unique kind of celebration, and I had somebody working for me for a couple of days on a David Letterman style top ten list, why we won the vote. Actually it was mundane. Theyd review it and youd go to a meeting where you received a 900-page memo, three quarters of which you didnt understand. No, the rest of those were really in the purview, in the ambit of Larry Summers. I had a certain background but it didnt include experiences like that. I took a trip out to Oklahoma to visit the district of a Congressman from Oklahoma whose vote we needed, and ultimately I think we got. I think thats a very important point because it turned out to be an awfully successful piece of legislation and not a single Republican voted for it. In retrospect, a limited, very grudging change. I had known him just slightly. We were both quite active in student government. But I interpreted that to mean, Maybe you should, because I felt that if he thought I shouldnt, hed say so. Its always a mistake to critique the Federal Reserve. So I attribute that to just the fact that Woodward talked a lot to Greenspan, but that may be just an incorrect take on it. So Mack played relatively little role in this. Then, while the agreement called for there to be no further duties or tariffs or anything on everything, a whole variety of items were carved out in order to get certain votes. By the way, in any matter where the statute of limitations was about to expire, there was nothing specific about the Madison matter that was any different. You were involved in the Little Rock Economic Summit? I remember that very vividly, and I said, I want to do the honorable thing. Were you involved in that effort? Thats one of the things that kind of surprises. They just didnt do it. No, Im sorry, it didnt have the power to do that, but there were ways of achieving that outcome. I started having to respond with a standard boilerplate response to the effect that the RTC has these procedural options and we were choosing among them. In the spring of 1991, I think it would have been May or June, we had the chance to have a talk here in New York, and I then talked to him by phone. So, the decision-making process was more than a bit chaotic, and the decision on the energy taxes was reflective of that. No, its time for Russell, I really need this, I really need it, the country really needs it. I do hope as we proceed that you will take the time to give us your continuing perceptions of Bentsen because unfortunately he is somebody we had approached about doing an interview and. The answer to that is yes. I only heardpeople are very superstitiousso I was told, It looks better or It looks like it may be all right. But it really was quite effective because one needed a military-like approach with only five or six weeks to go, and that bill was in trouble. I think though, if I can repeat myself once, I finished reading a few months ago a marvelous biography of TR [Theodore Roosevelt], the second volume of Edmund Morris work. But I remember we went to Little Rock. Everything is susceptible to being phased in, to being cut back, to being pilot-programmed. I believe it was the same night that she gave her press conference. Yes, it was a help. You can do all kinds of approaches to anything. Of course. Anyone who does that indeed does not know what he is doing, and its the equivalent of Economic Policy 101. Thats a very important difference, because it addressed healthcare, various items on childrens policy, crime initiatives, urban policythe full span of domestic policy issues, of which economic policy was just one element. You know, you call in for five minutes apiece and theyre all lined up. Of course it was a very small kind of backwater type of situation, not a big one. It was a very simple letter that was done up for me and I sent it to everybody saying, Just so you know, the RTC has only these procedural options in matters like this, and we will be reaching a decision on which of them to do before the statute of limitations expires. The questions from all these different parts of the countryOregon, Louisiana, Michiganwere all the same. Now, it may last five or six more years, it may last 25 more years, I dont know. Yes, but I dont think he thought it was going to be as tough on the Democratic side as it turned out to be. You can have whatever conversations you want to have in private. So the vote ended, Senate vote I mean, and we had that celebration. No, what Im trying to say is that there were several points of view advanced by some of the people there, who had, in one form or another, policy experience. Then maybe half of them we discussed about this person, that person. No. It should have been, I suppose, more evident at the time, but such things never are. You asked me about Bentsen because of his unavailability. Web(Studio: Charles Gibson) Earlier interview held with Evercore Partners Roger Altman about the House vote and the market reaction. These cookies do not store any information that directly identifies you. No, I dont remember that effort at all, so it must have been pretty quiet. Japan accepted a series of goals that we wanted them to accept, but the teeth, in terms of enforcement, werent there. Its worth asking. So anyway, within a few days, all of us who had anything to do with the RTC from the point of view of the Treasury were subpoenaed by Fiske. I do believe it was able to make a difference. But youd been doing transition work for a month. Everyone understood there was a lag factor. But I only began to spend heavy time on that after the August passage of the Presidents economic program. But was there any perspective then that in fact, the Japanese economy was weak relative to the other G7? I divided my time between the transition office and the Treasury. Its a famous meeting in the sense that Woodward wrote a lot about it, other people have written about it. But yes, we had meetings in his hotel room at three in the morning. There was. But its interesting to put it into perspective. Concessions involving individual members of Congress could often be done at a lower level, depending on the magnitude of the concession. For example, much has been made of the dueling camps, the deficit hawks versus the populists. We were the easy solution for the press. I think there were missed opportunities, yes; I dont believe they would have made a big difference however. I dont have any better thoughts on that than anybody else as to what it is about President Clinton that did that. Was it the selection of the people who were going to do the economic. So he didnt have the luxury of saying, Lets do it a year from now, as you often do with other things. Its a matter of record that I was not asked to resign, but Bentsen, a couple of weeks after the hearings were over, asked me, What do you really want to do? It was Clintons first, if I recall correctly, major international summit. Was there anything particular in his record in Arkansas that became sticking points with people in the community that you were attempting to raise money from? So he chose someone who not only had a great reputation and tremendous stature, but who could particularly help him with Congress, and it was a shrewd choice. I had no background for that. There were some cases where we did, but we didnt broadly know where each member of Congress really stood on this. That day I knew we were headed for defeat. So its clear that the idea about deficit reduction and fiscal policy takes root really during this transition. Under the normal circumstances, like Clintons, they have considerable difficulties in an adverse political environment to get anything done, and that is the more normal historical situation. That was the day the earth moved and Clintons view changed. That certainly, in terms of social assistance to low-income working age people, that was a transformative administration. One, the recession of 91 and early or mid 92, the economy was performing poorly. @ 34.032138, -118.722249. Bob Rubin. It may have struck people on the outside as unusual, but not if youd been around. Did it succeed? I didnt. It used to be, I believe, that they were graded on grounds of competent scholarship and so forth. Was the center of gravity in the White House, with you, or was it none? I think theres a wonderful tradition in American government where the outgoing administration typically does everything it can to assist the incoming one, and that was certainly true with the [Gerald] Ford administration. So I did a lot of work representing the Treasury on any number of issues in the White House councils of deliberation. You know, the only other thought I would express on this is, despite the drama of the moment and the stakes, everyone, as they say, puts on his pants one leg at a time. He doesnt even know about the advent of optical scanners in grocery stores, and that was the theme, that was THE central theme as codified, so to speak, in [James] Carvilles famous comment, its the economy, stupid. And its not the right move to inform a Cabinet officer that his team is Mr. X, Miss Y, and Miss Z. So its really a role that varies from Secretary to Secretary in terms of what that Secretary wants, and thats just a history of it. You couldnt say to yourself, Well in the end hell be fine. Some people thought they were misguided. WebRoger Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, the most active independent investment bank in the world today. I was the natural person to do that, having served in it before. 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. I mean, obviously, if it came down to the crunch time, youre going to have the President call. The bigger gamble then was, as you say, the long term, the response in the long-term credit markets, whats going to happen, and that, I take it, is where Allen Blinders. There were people like Senator [Phil] Gramm saying it would usher in a new depression. Obviously Sam Rayburn. Yes, Clinton was gregarious, obviously bright. This is a bit of an anecdote, but of course Joel Klein served in the Clinton administration. I would say it was something like this. Theres also an institutional dimension to the atmosphere in Washington thats very important and distinguishes the current situation from the situation in which you governed, and that is the existence of an independent counsel. David Gergen was brought, which I think was probably the fall of 93 and Panetta replaced Mackthat was an awfully big event, of course. It was a few votes, not one vote. But really, not until the spring of 1991 when I began to hear rumblings that he was thinking of running. 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. But fundamentally, I was getting those assignments from the legislative staff. He had good relations with certain members of Congress, and we needed that. I suppose the problem that the administration confronted was that it was far from being budget-neutral. The war room was very effective for Clinton, and of course, it was to some degree patterned after the war room in the campaign, which was then the object of an interesting film among other things. While at the University, Sure, sure. Could you see at that point a set of priorities emerging with the candidate? He did a version of what Carter did earlier, which was end up positioned to the right of most of his opponents in the Democratic primaries. Wed sit around in the Roosevelt Room, and you know how it works. 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. Yes. My testimony was rather a highlight of that. No. One is that it had a very rocky beginning in New Hampshire, and Im wondering if you have recollections about your reaction to the news events that occurred and to the electoral results in New Hampshire and how the President was able to deal with those things. That was not a high point of the Clinton Presidency. There was no surprise. And it turned around and by November 84 as you remember, it was Morning in America and he won 49 states. Tweet. He said, I know this will be hard, but I think I can get those folks. In the last 48 or 72 hours, because that vote was also a cliffhanger, although not as close. Although the President really thought he could convince more Democrats of the merits of NAFTA than he ultimately did. He and Kerrey had a very close relationship. No one thought on the morning of the election that Clinton was going to lose and Bush was going to win. I didnt think it was going to be that bad. You can do it through tax increases and then you have to choose the tax, and you can do it through spending reductions and you have to choose the area youre going to focus on. There was not a war going on. As far as healthcare versus welfare reform? Way back in season one of Shameless, Fiona got a housekeeping job at a hotel. But the next day, Monday, I was on a plane to Waco, Texas. In all aspects? Am I misremembering, did the President invite Mr. Greenspan, to sit in the gallery next to his wife when he delivered his economic policy. He lost that election. Then, as the weeks and months went by, it came closer and closer and closer to whip counts. Whats the question, why didnt Clinton embrace welfare ahead of healthcare? How were those dealt with, the decision to make a significant concession in the bill? So heres a person who knew how to manage himself. 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. Fourth, I recall that the economic forecasts for 93 were not very heartening. I think it was serious as a political thing, meaning you had three candidates instead of two and of course, the dynamic was different. Theres some story that he demanded a commission on entitlement reform as a price. I knew what the ATF was, but not much more than that. Yes, to some degree. The process was really quite intense and they were taking on a task that was utterly immense, a much bigger one really than the economic program, and came forth with a plan that was revolutionary, but whose revolutionariness doomed it. You can have half of it, or something to that effect. Carter had the famous $50 rebate, which became the object of much derision ultimately. I was in Tokyo with President Clinton, the Tokyo Economic Summit and Id made several trips to Tokyo paving the way for that. Yes, actually there was a big debate about healthcare, welfare reform, and NAFTA. And presided over eight years of peace. 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. The Federal Government doesnt have much of a role in education. That wasnt a very long meeting. So one knew through the press who was going and so forth. Now streaming on: Powered by I then had the brilliant ideaIm saying this, obviously sarcastically, that I should inform the White House what those procedural alternatives were. Not necessarily. Once she was put in charge of it, it obviously had tremendous internal focus. 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. 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 think he saw the political opportunity presented by that in addition to the basic merits of NAFTA. It was after all largely negotiated by his predecessors, and yet he took a big gamble on that one, too, and thats sort of a kick in the midsection to a lot of his Democratic supporters. It wasnt funny in the conventional sense, but it was just funny. That they felt that people who had served the President. I spent the last couple of hours of that period in the Oval Office with the President and that was quite unforgettable too because the President was hugely animated, to some extent discouraged, to some extent angry, and there were moments when I was the only one in there with him. I think our administration tried, as hard as it was possible to try, to change the dynamic of the U.S.-Japanese trade relationship. Yes. I said, Yes, I had this one meeting, and told him what it was. But in any event, Madison Guaranty had failed. He knew what the House would do. So the experience of visiting these guys, some of whom were right on the edge, made tremendous impact on me. 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. But I didnt know where the President was on NAFTA. So obviously by inauguration day hed largely assimilated them. People who liked Cuomo liked him a lot; people who didnt like him didnt like him at all, and it was about half-and-half. Was this your first opportunity? But I worked on a lot of members of Congress, I enjoyed that, I just did. So hes the one who asked you to serve in that position, not Clinton. So a group of us at the deputy level, Joan Spero, Charlene Barshefsky, Bo Cutter, me, who were the four senior members of that group, started entering into discussions with our Japanese counterparts. The President decided it, but Mack McLarty actually called me. Im not sure. This wont help you because its not very original, but theres something about President Clinton that had the effect of rubbing salt on a wound as far as his opponents were concerned. I think as a general matter the perception, which has become the accepted wisdom, of those dueling camps, is much overstated. Clinton had plied the waters of the Democratic Party with great assiduousness for many, many years. It was a successful fundraiser. Im very fond of her, extremely fond of her, and it was, Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. [Mary Todd] Lincoln? In fact, thats an important point. Secretary [William] Simon spent hours with me, which is quite odd in retrospect since I was 32. He just determined each time that what he had to do was get through this chapter and somehow live to fight for the next one and didnt take the longer view. Then it went down to defeat. But he did give a big speech about healthcare before NAFTA came to a vote, right, as I recall? Not at the outside, but eventually, I came into the second camp because I began to understand the scope of the issue. What was going on? Today you have Governor [Howard] Dean, Congressman [Dick] Gephardt, for instance. In fact, it was six months before. Was there awareness at that time, I mean, in the perspective of 2003, I recognize the world looks different. You were responsible for organizing the war room. Could be. Twofold. It turned out to be the equivalent of walking the plank. He wanted to focus on a few important things at any particular time. The only reason I think it worked was Bob Rubin, who had the skill and the temperament to make it work. Ive seen it happen so often in business as well as in government. He was not confronted with a grave crisis, but I think history will treat him very well, because essentially. I got involved in certain aspects of preparing it, editing it, fine-tuning it, I recall that. Do you think any of those are due to the sort of pressure. I cant recall my own platform, and as a result I really cant recall his. There was no committee per se but he had a few people who were involved at that point and doing something like looking at Putting People First and editing it, and then just these periodic conversations we would have on the fly. Obviously he balanced the budget, now its unbalanced. We came up with a Btu [British thermal unit] tax. Dont ever let those conversations be public. Are we missing anything in terms of your responsibilities? Born on April 2, 1946 in United States of America, Roger Altman started his career as Financial professional . Do you remember your impressions of Clinton as an undergraduate? Not giving it a lot of thought, frankly, I said, Sure. The Treasury has a wonderful history of its own and a great deal of pride suffuses those halls. Thats just exactly what I said. He said he wanted to tell me that the President had decided to appoint Bentsen to be Secretary of the Treasury and Rubin to be head of the National Economic Council. But the reason I remember it was that it was funereal. When concessions needed to be made, this was before you get up too high, Russell referred to the point that deals had already been made. Can you give us a picture? But, in any event, the presentations were very effective and that was, I think, the most important single day in the evolution of that original policy. I mean, it can be in private, it can be in print, it can be any other way. I doubt it. Can you tell us how you first got to know Bill Clinton? That was about the last time he didnt listen to Bentsen, but he should have. He would explain to me the problems with the particular pieces, but, I dont know if you had to be Bentsen, did you? It was an all right agreement. Is it okay if we move away from the crisis of getting the big things through to just the more mundane ways that the government ran while you were there? Hotel room at three in the sense that Woodward wrote a lot of thought,,. Know, you call in for five minutes apiece and theyre all lined.! Opportunity presented by that in addition to the basic merits of NAFTA of social assistance to working. Only began to spend heavy time on that, I was told, it didnt have the of... The time, youre going to have the luxury of saying, Lets do it a lot thought!, although not as close or 72 hours, because essentially, had. 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