I was not one who thought the whole idea of putting the First Lady in charge of this was somehow unsound and I always had good relations with Mrs. Clinton, so we communicated pretty well. No. The President made a decision he was going toand he discussed this during the campaign at lengthbe more aggressive with Japan to have a fairer, more level playing field. Youre referring to the environmental and labor side issues. That process had been going on. But I talked to Secretary Bentsen and I think hed been already talked to about it, but anyway, he said, Fine. Secretary Bentsen didnt know about it but a lot of other people did, and nobody paid much attention to it. Then, as the weeks and months went by, it came closer and closer and closer to whip counts. Erskine Bowles had to testify and so forth. I was to call Bentsen promptly. That notion took hold at that meeting. That has historically been, or at least in the modern era, a successful approach. 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. He saw the opportunity, he seized it, went against the grain and, lets face it, presided over a period of unprecedented prosperity and balanced the budget for the first time in approximately 50 years. The key players turned out to be the so-called blue dog Democrats. How were those dealt with, the decision to make a significant concession in the bill? 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? Its very difficult to do that during a campaign. But it coincided, I think more importantly than that, with the onset of huge political problems for Clinton in the context of Vince Foster, Whitewater, and the entire beginning of that. In a curious way hed compromised his own position. Clintons that way. I was elected twice vice president of my class. In general, no. What was going on? 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. Its the biggest story in Washington, Hillary Clinton, the whole thing. The President decided it, but Mack McLarty actually called me. 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. I wasnt involved in any of the delegate-related strategies, no. Things like, I cant remember what example we used, but Senator X voted for us because he was afraid hed have to have lunch with the President again, things like that. The House voted first, and on the day of the House vote we didnt think we had the votes, or at least we thought the odds were too high that we would lose. I know this sounds a bit odd, I hadnt thought about it a huge amount, partly because I had a full-tilt business career, and I was trying to separate the two. The type of student attending each school at the time. I was given an office over in the Treasury. I went straight down to Washington and moved in, and I was there on the day the office opened, as were many other people. Thats how politics works. Alan Greenspan was on it; Simon was chair of it. I mean, maybe Reagan was to some degree briefly an anomaly, although he never had the reputation of being an anomaly, and so I wondered if the President, as Commander-In-Chief, also responsible for foreign policy, viewed this particular policy in that light too. I mean, its amusing in a certain sense, but of the hundred members of the Senate he probably talked on any kind of regular basis to about ten. Carter had the famous $50 rebate, which became the object of much derision ultimately. I think any President who is either fortunate enough or skillful enough to preside over a period of peace, at least as far as American soil and American forces are concerned, deserves credit either for his good luck or his skill. But the key revelation was the most stimulative thing we could do for this economy is to induce a monetary response. I think that had to do with the actual signing of the treaty. So I spent a lot of time on healthcare. I was just in awe of people like that. While at the University, Do you recall in your conversations with Senator Bentsen, were there missed opportunities for developing a more bipartisan atmosphere in Washington at this time, or was it pretty much just a foregone conclusion that because the Republicans were now completely in the minority that they were going to obstruct from the outset? I would actually like to hear you answer that question too. This was breaking news, CNN [Cable News Network] was interrupting its programming and so forth and President Clinton said, What is this about? Why does the government want to take over the healthcare system? So people should think of it in those very basic terms, and a lot of people havent and I think less of them for that. But then of course, I went home, my family was away, you walk home, you walk into your house, and its time to watch ESPN [Entertainment and Sports Programming Network] or whatever you do. The social aspect of it also involved here? But the reason I remember it was that it was funereal. Do you have the perception that there were some other instances where maybe this wasnt done? That was in July or June or something. I think Clinton was better served by virtue of Perots presence in the campaign than without it. It wasnt trade; trade was not a big issue in the campaign. It wasnt a process where people were maneuvering furiously to see who could get the last word in to the President or something. I think each person makes his or her own decision. There was. He didnt, but he thought he could. That day I knew we were headed for defeat. I raise the question because one of the outside perceptions that you get later on is when, in the early post-election period of the administration, theres some considerable debate within the administration about which of the priorities ought to come first, and among some of the people that you mentioned in Little Rock at the time. But I really could never figure that out. I sat there for two or three hours and he took the measure of me and at the end he said, Would you like to do this? The buzz on Clinton, even then, among those few following it, was positive. 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. I just never took him seriously as a candidate. Roger C. Altman. There may have been, but I know I didnt feel it. New York, Corporate | Did the portfolio members that you were approaching on NAFTA change from the work you were doing. A lot of kids who went to Georgetown were interested in having a good time, and most people who went to Chicago were really serious about their academic pursuits and the world around them. Lloyd Bentsen was a classic Texas conservative Democrat. They just didnt believe it would work. Ill never forget, I went in to see one of them whod been shot eight times. But that group, top five, or six or seven, just masters of the game. 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. Maybe there was, I wasnt privy to that or exposed to that. More in terms of ostracism from your former colleagues. Clinton, as we all know, is very open, but also a very undisciplined guy. Rob Rubin and I went together, Bob Reich was there, Gene Sperling was there, Bob Shapiro was there. He was very disciplined and he went to bed at a certain time and he went home. Youre only there because he allowed you to be, and you owe him a debt of gratitude for that because without him no service, and without service your life is less. 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. No, no. She figured in some bumper stickers also. The answer to that is yes. I think so, yes. Please. One of the initial ideas was an energy tax. Well, I got briefed on it and basically, two points here: one is the chairman of the RTC whether it is me or Mr. Casey or the people before him, never were briefed on, exposed to, involved in, or otherwise saw anything at all about the investigations the RTC was pursuing. The Regency Hotel. We wanted Japan to commit to rebalance the current account between the two countries, including committing itself to some pro-growth steps at home, and we wanted a specific agreement on autos and certain other things. Was there anything that particularly distinguished this campaign from what youd seen in these other instances thats noteworthy? And the difficulty became quickly evident once the program was laid out. 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. 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. But I would also say he contributed to his own under-appreciation. That was all part of the same ultimate mix. So it was job one, so to speak. Im a little too close to this, because Im not sure how history will view it. Bentsen had a lucidits hard to describe how lucid Bentsens observations always were. If you think about it in the context of today, well see how the primary campaign plays out, but it will be unusual if differences on issues were the decisive factor. I attended the little thing at Monticello when he was on his way to be inaugurated, the first time he stopped by in the bus. I think well probably want to pick up there and find out about that experience. 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. But I dont think Ive ever witnessed, I can only call it a hate campaign, or feeling of hate I guesswhether its a campaign or not I dont knowbut this intense animosity to Bill Clinton and to Hillary Clinton. So, third, economic policy was number one. Well help you over here We didnt have to have the President do every one of those. But wasnt the Clinton economic plan somewhat right-of-center too? Within a month, I remember vividly one day, I had seven radio shows. So I knew we had a problem. None of the aspects of her role bothered me at all. After all, John Kennedy is seen in the middle by historians. 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. No, first of all, it wasnt his focus. Does that mean that the first initiative of the new President, should he, she, be a Democrat be healthcare? Keeping in mind that with the exception of labor, which is a heck of a big exception, all of the powerful economic groups in the United States were for it and Clinton had just gone through a bruising battle where many of them were on the other side of him. Bob Rubin never uttered a single syllable except of friendship and support of President Clinton. The only way he saved his life was to throw himself off the roof after hed been shot several times. Web(Studio: Charles Gibson) Earlier interview held with Evercore Partners Roger Altman about the House vote and the market reaction. Then, in 1995, he formed Evercore. But, first, right at the outset, it was a terribly flawed idea to have a full-time member of the administration serving also as the head of an independent regulatory agency and that should have dawned on me in the earliest going, just the inherent conflict there. 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. So Mack played relatively little role in this. I wasnt sitting all by myself with him, but sure, there were various opportunities to be in relatively small groups with him. 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. Oh, in the bill itself? As I recall, the distinctive thing about Clinton, if everyone had one courageous stand, his was on free trade. Its very puzzling to me how that could happen when the man had such an obvious gift for feeling peoples pain and a very strong public presence. 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. Web(Studio: Charles Gibson) Earlier interview held with Evercore Partners Roger Altman about the House vote and the market reaction. Presidents should be presented with options that have been carefully developed, really carefully vetted, and those options should be written down in the usual way, and that wasnt the case here. 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. When did the President. And, of course, the ATF agents didnt know what they were going to experience and he found himself exposed to an open line of fire. So you wouldnt have had any involvement on Capitol Hill or anything like that at the time? Why didnt that work, from your perspective? And we had the same in the Carter administration, but it had been more junior. You had that, and then the legislative group, meaning Howard Paster and his counterparts from Treasury and Commerce and so forth, would meet every afternoon. But its just a reality that in an economy of that size, spending changes arent going to have much effect on the economy; monetary changes can. A little bit. You might call it something different. It was the best political speech, with a couple of exceptions, Id ever heard, which prompted a wonderful comment from former President Bush, who then came to the microphone and said, Now I know why Im on the outside looking in. I can remember very well when Breaux and Boren offered Clinton that compromise, and Bentsen said, You should take it. Ive never either been attracted to that approach nor felt that it was an effective one. 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. No, I had very little contact with Mr. Clinton for roughly 20 years after leaving. But the two major currency accords, the Plaza Accord and the Louvre Accord, were done in times of crisis in the foreign exchange markets. 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. Theyd been working on it for two or three weeks or whatever one does, but, as they usually do, the day before the profile runs, they want to come in and interview him so they can have a current aspect to it. Yes, Clinton was gregarious, obviously bright. Can you tell us a little bit about those conversations, if you remember? Can you tell us about that? Or should be, not will be, but should be. Hundreds of meetings over many months, also similar to those original meetings, too many people, too long, too many people talking and so forth. That they felt that people who had served the President. 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 left the Treasury about a month later when my successor Frank Newman, who was then Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, was nominated and had been confirmed. Those are my exact words. It wasnt a great agreement. Lets face it, NAFTA has worked. 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. Bentsen was chosen during the first week of December. I think less well than he was treated while he was in office. Yes, and also there was considerable uncertainty as to whether Cuomo was indeed a candidate, which, as we all know, he proved not to be. Hed been in office a month or two, defeated by a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats, and that was many months before the fateful votes on the economic plan. Did you know him, you said you hadnt known him before then? I also told him, which was quite a mistake, that I was thinking about recusing myself from the case because I realized that there was such a conflict here between being a member of the administration on one hand and being a Federal regulator on the other. But before then, somebody was charged with thinking about transitional issues, actually before the November election, and my question to you is whether, in your work in Treasury transition, you had relied on any work that had been done before? Somebody was wrong. 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. There were those obviously who felt the most important thing was to get the deficit down. Everything is susceptible to being phased in, to being cut back, to being pilot-programmed. There was no real reason for that, it was just fate, happenstance, just the case that not many of them did. By the time 94 was over, the Congress was in Republican hands. Of course, any situation like that always has its humor. There was concern that we had already spilled an enormous amount of blood on the economic plan. One, the recession of 91 and early or mid 92, the economy was performing poorly. But I didnt know where the President was on NAFTA. Lloyd Bentsens reputation preceded him and he was a master of the game as far as Washington and the legislative process and handling himself and so forth in a way that few ever have been. Thats something we dont have a lot of information about. Did you ever get the sense that there were some people who mystified him? 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