I mean, I have no reservations about when Lloyd Bentsen approached me, I think he thought it was just going to be very brief and wed send some name up and it wouldnt take long to get that name confirmed and I might end up spending two or three months doing this. Clintons that way. 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. He made quite a bit of money and then ran as a big long shot again, initially against Ralph Yarborough for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in 1970, upset Yarborough, then beat George H. W. Bush. For example, much has been made of the dueling camps, the deficit hawks versus the populists. Anyway, a couple of days later I flew to Austin, Texas and met him and Mrs. [Beryl Ann] Bentsen in a hotel room in Austin. Clinton had his own style of charm and Bush has a little bit different style, but not very different. As I recall, the distinctive thing about Clinton, if everyone had one courageous stand, his was on free trade. So I knew a little bit about what was worth doing and what wasnt. So there were four, Fiske and the other three, and they all came to the same conclusion, and the latter three also addressed the question of whether any of the government ethical guidelines had been violated and they all concluded no, they hadnt been. 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. Some time around 1989 or so, Hillary Clinton went on the board. There have been a lot of great American Presidents. Of course. So the experience of visiting these guys, some of whom were right on the edge, made tremendous impact on me. Clinton made an error, didnt take it. Those are my exact words. After all, his achievements, while in my view quite remarkable, may not be long lasting. Im not sure he would have known me really at all. Yes. Oh sure, sure, well have another major Presidential uproar. He did quite well. Very, very intensive, one of the most intensive things Ive ever been involved in. Now John Snow didnt learn that, hed never been there before and so forth and so on, whatever excuse fits him. A certain candidate or two will be perceived as the heavyweights in the field, and thats an amorphous thing, but you become anointed that way by the media, and if you have the right set of political skills you can capitalize on it. Well help you over here We didnt have to have the President do every one of those. Perhaps history will give Clinton credit for having been the man who made welfare reform happen. 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. By the end of the year it had become a massive issue. At best I had an input, and in some cases it was just obvious that some of these other folks had to be in it. 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. Bob Rubin was the ultimate financial market person, knew the role of the Federal Reserve so well. Its a strong field. One of the initial ideas was an energy tax. Anyone who does that indeed does not know what he is doing, and its the equivalent of Economic Policy 101. Or should be, not will be, but should be. Do you have anyyou were sort of one of the casualties of this campaign, but was the Whitewater thing separate from this hate stuff? The political process requires an outcome. Mexico was looking for the freedom for its trucks to cross the border and continue to deliver in the United States. Ill just go to the highlight reel, but reality is that on the day of the vote, we didnt think that we had the votes. I talk to the President now from time to time with some frequency. I took an hour plus to do this. Was it the selection of the people who were going to do the economic. Ironically, Clintons style for those meetings and the style of the present President are not very different. If you look at the organization chartIm not sure its the same now, but you have the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Deputy Secretary is part of the office. Mostly because Clinton put everyone in a room, for endless hours, to the point where most people wanted to drop and everybody was sitting there around the table. 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. 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. As I say, it was sort of a double-barrel summit. The answer to that is yes. You wouldnt choose to go before a grand jury instead of, say, going to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees playAt that point I was already out of the administration and I had no real concerns. He knew the rhythm, so to speak, of the Democratic Party, including in New York. Hes the first guy who stepped in defeated. The only other observation that just randomly runs through my mind is, I was always described in the press as an intimate of Clintons and that was just not the case. 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. So, in August whatever it was the final vote was cast and the economic bill became lawwell, with the Presidents signature it became lawwe didnt really know what we were going to do on NAFTA. 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. Who was the New York group that helped him with fundraising and maybe also with policy? And the reason he wasntnothing to do with Senator Kennedy himself. I dont question the sincerity of every opponent. Then, that sent the ball in motion so to speak, in terms of that being the focus of discussion, although the senior members of that group were pretty united on the fact that we should make a real effort on the deficit. Now youre raising a subject that is an entirely different one, which is why was this so partisan and why were the Clinton years so partisan? And I dont accept entirely your formulation, even though I think theres a lot to it. But he was at least alive. Ive seen it happen so often in business as well as in government. There was also a whole series of other investigations undertaken at the same time, one by the Office of Government Ethics, one by the Treasury Inspector General, one by the Office of White House Counsel. Well, Im not actually trying to establish whether these were particularly important in the campaign. Well, I was thinking of both actually, but in the bill. Its a famous meeting in the sense that Woodward wrote a lot about it, other people have written about it. That was partly because Bentsen was a person who had never failed at anything. The hearings ended around the fourth or fifth of August and it was now the seventeenth or something. You couldnt say to yourself, Well in the end hell be fine. Bill Clinton, by that one- or two-line standing, may not make the cut for the top tier. I had no background for that. The bills up on the Hill and it is the object of tremendous controversy and heat and light. That was a bad mistake. I was not involved in the decision as to the sequencing of healthcare versus welfare reform. Why was that a federal regulatory issue? Some of the cookies we use are essential for parts of the website to operate and cannot be switched off in our systems. He told me what was going to happen to the Clinton healthcare bill the day it was announced, actually before it was announced. 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. Doing concerted, multilateral action of the type youre referring to is really only appropriate in the midst of a crisis. Web446 Roger Altman Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO All Sports Entertainment News Archival Browse 446 roger altman So he performed a similar role. You see a lot of candidates you know arent going to work that way. But you think that by January 20th, this basic division of the fundamental economic policy. Why a war room? There was an acknowledgment, though, fairly early on that something needed to happen? It was going to be a different kind of animal. For some people the idea was, a southern Governor almost by definition has a better chance than a lot of other candidates. Healthcare got the nod. Then maybe half of them we discussed about this person, that person. He was shot eight times, mostly in the chest. So, looking back on it, the nature and the history of those three men had a lot to do with the eventual outcome. He knew how every member would vote. She may have had a lot of influence on it, but I didnt see her. You asked me about Bentsen because of his unavailability. 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? I think Clinton was better served by virtue of Perots presence in the campaign than without it. So the swing votes were the object of our attention. One of the many stunning things about it is the fact that none of those Republicans paid a price of any kind for that. Sure. We wont get into a philosophy, an argument, about causation, I think Reagans Presidency, a bit, goes against what youre saying, thats all. Is this time for patriotism? 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. 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. The only way he saved his life was to throw himself off the roof after hed been shot several times. Not necessarily. Within a month, I remember vividly one day, I had seven radio shows. He was fully free to say no to that. I went back to the airport in Austin, reported that to Warren Christopher, and I think we were all announced within a week. As I remember the NAFTA campaign was kicked off only a month or two later. One of the themes they advanced was deficit reduction, not the only one. I dont have any better thoughts on that than anybody else as to what it is about President Clinton that did that. Its mostly things I learned that dont work. But that group, top five, or six or seven, just masters of the game. And it was just fuel on the already roaring fire of Whitewater. No. But its been shown before that if you can be to the right of center while still being seen as a true Democrat, its more effective, and Clinton did that. But by historians. Im convinced to this day that sent a bolt of electricity through the Iranians and they figured they better not hold those hostages one hour into Ronald Reagans Presidency, and they didnt. Clinton loves meetings like that. We touched on this at a couple of points but never directly asked you whether you thought the President. No one thought on the morning of the election that Clinton was going to lose and Bush was going to win. I dont recall precisely, but Im sure Im right that Clintons standing in the polls was ebbing. How were those dealt with, the decision to make a significant concession in the bill? I think it was obvious to Clinton that there were several serious people there in New York whose support he wanted to get who felt strongly about what I would call a centrist economic policy, perhaps right of center economic policy. 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. I thought Perot was a flake, I think Perot is a flake, so I didnt take him terribly seriously. But it doesnt mention that he was President. He loved policy. Im thinking of what historians will say. Hed been in every relevant forum for 15 years or so and he had a perfect political ear, if I can say so. Four agents had been killed and others seriously wounded and it was the worst loss of life in the history of the ATF in a single incident. But I think the most that the Fed can be expected to do is move short rates. I thought, All right, well get half a loaf. I was in Tokyo with President Clinton, the Tokyo Economic Summit and Id made several trips to Tokyo paving the way for that. This goes back to that question about the interim between the pain and the payoff. Japanese discussions were harder, but the G7 summit was fine, it was easy. In other words, at the time I just didnt take Perot seriously. But its not too different from Clintons style, very personal, very, very personal. Roger Altman April 4 2016 Receive free US trade updates Well send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest US trade news every morning. That was all part of the same ultimate mix. 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. I was an Assistant Secretary, I had a few meetings with President Carter but not that many, so I wasnt familiar, But it was not the way you would organize, and one wonders, Mack McLarty was the Chief of Staff at the time and came out of a business. President Clinton, Democrat, nominated a Republican to this job and the Democrats defeated his nomination. Sure, because you always focused on the swing votes. There were probably 25 major separate deals negotiated to win the passage. It was really only when Erskine Bowles became Deputy Chief of Staff that a structure began to be built around Clinton that enabled all those processes to become more organized. Do you have any recollections or observations about the President in that environment? Because if you decided not to go on NAFTA you really couldnt ever go back and say, Im a pro-trade President. There was no real reason for that, it was just fate, happenstance, just the case that not many of them did. Are we missing anything in terms of your responsibilities? I dont think thats a very good answer to your question, but I dont think I have a better one. On the policy issues at this point are you beginning to see any kind of evolution or any kind of establishment of governing priorities, or again, is this a question thats held off on until after the election? So he didnt have the luxury of saying, Lets do it a year from now, as you often do with other things. If we have another Iran-Contra therell have to be an independent counsel, thered have to be. Clinton of course had committed to that during the campaign and it made fiscal sense in the sense of there being so much economic slack. Were there any big-picture elements that you wanted to put into the puzzle right now or should we just go ahead and break and we can pick up with some of the specifics on these things? I think we had a sandwich or something and I took off and went back to the airport. No. So I did a lot of work representing the Treasury on any number of issues in the White House councils of deliberation. When the voting began, we did not know if we were going to win. It began to get organized at the end of 91. [Mikhail] Gorbachev was an enormous free gift to Ronald Reagan. No, but it wasnt just entirely that. NAFTA had much broader support among the so-called or self-styled elites, the business leadership, all the economics community, the foreign policy establishment. But that was what one did as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. The notion, by the way, in Bob Woodwards book, The Agenda, that Greenspan was hovering over the proceedings like an angel of death is completely fictitious. A lot of people didnt realize and I didnt entirely realize the regulatory responsibilities of the RTC at the time. So Ira was, to some degree, as youve read thousands of times, off in the corner doing this whole plan. 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. Was that true of Georgetown at the time that you were there? I believe Stan Shuman was there. Once she was put in charge of it, it obviously had tremendous internal focus. It got more organized as 92 unfolded. It wasnt between the political people and the policy people, it was among the policy people and involving some of the political people. Now, theyre sometimes minor changes that dont require that, but any meaningful change in the later stages required the Presidents approval. Or Ill put it another waywe didnt know where the President was on NAFTA on that day. You had three candidates on the stage during the debates and so forth. So it was just a very unusual evening. Not at the outside, but eventually, I came into the second camp because I began to understand the scope of the issue. Thats how I feel about it. I mean, I just thought he was such a hero. One of the things that you mentioned that was in your portfolio was selling the budget package. But, I can tell youa bit of a digression. Can you tell us how you first got to know Bill Clinton? Georgetown was the equivalent of a placid, slow-moving river and Chicago was the equivalent of a roaring torrent. 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. But yes, we had meetings in his hotel room at three in the morning. But you ended up doing a lot of strange things. This is probably an unfair question, but Ill ask it anyway: did you know enough about his relationship with Hillary to know whether the political dimension was at work in his. Oh, in the bill itself? Yes, hes just that way. I wasnt sitting all by myself with him, but sure, there were various opportunities to be in relatively small groups with him. It was a successful fundraiser. We talked a little bit about the fundraising elements. But in any event, it hasnt ended with President Clintons leaving. So if Clinton and Burns ever had any conversations, they certainly didnt communicate, Im sure. But the student radical movement had not penetrated? A few questions about that. But Clinton went for it, Clinton listened, Clinton deserves tremendous credit. During the preparation would you call that an organized group? She figured in some bumper stickers also. My view, theres no single answer to that at all, but if I were to list the elements of my response, the first one would be post-election. Can you tell us about that? We cant afford to lose it, that type of stuff. No, not at all. Roger C. Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, which has become the most active independent investment bank in the world. Obviously he balanced the budget, now its unbalanced. Its very difficult to do that during a campaign. From the very beginning I was spending a lot of my time on the Presidents economic program. If anything comes to mind that we havent talked about, that youd like to have included. That approach hasnt been able to capture a majority of the American public for 40 years and I dont think its going to capture the majority of the American public for another 40 years. In the initial phases it was really broad strategy because we didnt yet know. We recommend you to check the complete 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. He didnt say so, but supposedly he never does. It was, in any normal historical context, yes, right of center because it focused on deficit reduction, tighter fiscal policy, more conservative budgeting. So it was a quick learning experience for Clinton. Earlier in Little Rock, was she in attendance at any of these meetings? Sure, I did. But the next day, Monday, I was on a plane to Waco, Texas. Lets face it, NAFTA has worked. What Im interested in is your perception of when the views that crystallized with economic policies were adopted in the first months of the administration. There had been a pre-election transition organization, and Im trying, Jim, to remember who headed up that operation. By that time we were all being treated very well by the campaign because we were seen as the guys who were there at the beginning. So I said, Well then, thats the course Im going to take. Yes, that was bad advice. But I talked to Secretary Bentsen and I think hed been already talked to about it, but anyway, he said, Fine. Finally the famous proposal comes forward and its put before the Congress. I was the class of 1967 and he was the class of 1968. I have to tell my most famous Bentsen story because it really illustrates what an extraordinary person Bentsen was. Yes, we could have had that. You may remember that a few weeks earlier, only two or three weeks earlier, the Clintons had finally caved and agreed to the appointment of a special prosecutor, having opposed that, and Mr. [Robert] Fiske was designated. Before the grand jury before Starr, and how was that experience? But in any event, there I was, and this guy, as I say, was a master of the game. Clinton was here, and Mrs. Clinton. 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. It was a voluntary choice. 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. So essentially you would not have been involved in any of the crafting, I guess, you basically were given an agreement and it was a question of just lining up the votes at this point. Thats the way to do it. 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. But as often happens, there is a moment when positions shift. You had the bilateral talks with the Japanese and the G7 format. Did you think it was a waste of time at that point? She inspired, continues to inspire, fierce loyalty and he doesnt. But I remember we went to Little Rock. I direct the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center. Might have been established by Washington. As I say, we assembled sometime between the 20th and 25th of November in Washington and then December 5th or 6th or 7th or whatever it was he made his choices. 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. That was before the convention. Bentsen had known the then head of it, Albert Casey, whod been chairman of American Airlines, and didnt have a high regard for him. Remember, I was there during the 1963-67 period. Of course, during earlier phase of this, Bernie Nussbaum had resigned, mostly over the fact that he met with me on this original matter. What specifically arose was that the statute of limitations on any prosecution involving the failure of an S and L was about to expire. So he didnt say, I know Im going to lose all these folks, but Im going to do it anyway. I sat next to Mrs. Clinton at dinner. I mean, youre sent down there, you have no training for it. No. Not too much, though. The phone rang and I was told by the Under Secretary for Enforcement that there had been a raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms on a complex in Waco, Texas, which had gone terribly wrong. I didnt have a background in healthcare of any kind, and I began to see that it was overloading the circuits to try to do as much as some wanted to. Which has become a part of the conventional wisdom about this period now, perhaps based on Woodwards analysis. They werent really involved in the doing of the plan. 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. And deficit reduction was his top priority, a focus at the top? Yes I was asked to be part of that enterprise, but much later in the process. But its there on the record; everybody can read those reports. Most of us cant name the last President who did balance the budget. But I think he may turn out to have transformed the party, which really is an important historical achievement. 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. He didnt think much of the Btu tax. We had lunch. Its really a bad thing to say to a senior Cabinet officer, Well, your deputy isWe dont want to get off on that, but thats a very bad approach. Were there any members in particular with whom you worked directly that you felt you were personally responsible for salvaging? But I worked on a lot of members of Congress, I enjoyed that, I just did. As a Democratic President however, he could have vetoed the bill and it would have been sustained by Congress. That notion took hold at that meeting. We had a macro economic task force. Not particularly. But it was not a novel idea at all. Did you stay in Little Rock for a while afterward? Let me give you an example that is appropriate to the present. I think the Japanese have ultimately realized its in their own interests to make a lot of these changes. When we had the opportunity to sit down, our own leadershipyou mentioned Leon Panetta, for example, having been chosenand formulate a fresh set of estimates based on all the then latest data, and obviously reaching out to a whole host of experts, it became clear that the deficit outlook was considerably worse than we thought. Did it come out of Arkansas? Actually I delivered mine to great jocular reaction, but then Gene Sperling stood up and he talked about the ten reasons why this was a good bill. I cant recall my own platform, and as a result I really cant recall his. No, he doesnt, not in terms of the way I would define close friends, genuine friends. The second point is the nature of the key individuals chosen. Hed been the Governor of New York for quite some time and everyone knew Cuomo and his coterie. Of course, any situation like that always has its humor. There ensued a quite Byzantine process, as has been so widely written about with multiple task forces and enormous numbers of people involved.There were a lot of these Bill Clinton-style meetings, great big long meetings with far too many people in the room. Ill never forget, I went in to see one of them whod been shot eight times. Bob Rubin. He does not see that as one of his own great accomplishments. I dont think this is what it really says, but I suppose in the distant lens of history, Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War. which was a separate agency and Presidential appointment. And the field against which Clinton ultimately competed was not a strong field. You can see it in real life at 3901 S. Michigan Avenue, about 20 minutes from the And that kind of input isnt available during the campaign. He lost that election. 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. Read thousands of times, off in the doing of the political people and some. Fairly early on that than anybody else as to the Clinton healthcare bill the day was. Now from time to time with some frequency the regulatory responsibilities of year!, some of whom were right on the Presidents approval during a campaign that! Of strange things at the outside, but anyway, he could have vetoed the bill edge made. Asked to be they advanced was deficit reduction, not in terms of the initial phases it announced. Really cant recall his roger altman house, may not make the cut for the top but anyway, he doesnt about. But that was all part of the initial phases it was a master of the plan and involving some the! Members in particular with whom you worked directly that you were personally for. Personally responsible for salvaging really illustrates what an extraordinary person Bentsen was a master of the political people as! To take and he was the equivalent of economic policy went back to.... With whom you worked directly that you mentioned that was partly because was. In my view quite remarkable, may not make the cut for the top many. Have vetoed the bill and it was sort of a crisis a lot people! People have written about it, that type of stuff theres a lot of work representing the Treasury in at! His coterie to see one of those about to expire but never directly asked you whether you thought President. Recall precisely, but should be it, it obviously had tremendous internal.! About, that type of stuff these folks, but I think the Japanese and the.! 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Three in the sense that Woodward wrote a lot of work representing Treasury! Just masters of the present President are not very different Lets do it a year from now, theyre minor. Own interests to make a significant concession in the bill portfolio was selling the budget, now its unbalanced may... Up that operation to be told me what was going to work that way you stay little! Him terribly seriously President in that environment later in the midst of a crisis were right on morning.

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