Many people consider him, many of his opponents considered him to be setting new heights of insincerity and to have misrepresented a lot of his past. 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? As I recall, the distinctive thing about Clinton, if everyone had one courageous stand, his was on free trade. It was a few votes, not one vote. So, looking back on it, the nature and the history of those three men had a lot to do with the eventual outcome. 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. Some of them I think were insincere, but many of them were sincere. It turned out to be the equivalent of walking the plank. I think my point is slightly different. I do believe it was able to make a difference. I would actually like to hear you answer that question too. Well, if you think about spending initiatives that you could take today that are politically imaginable, they amount to a hill of beans in a $10.7 trillion economy. and I had no previous knowledge of it at all. Its a strong field. A fairly major effort went into that, which I was part of. Very, I think, untoward behavior, myself. Once again, were grateful for your time. One of the reasons it was bloodless was because the Soviets knew what they had and didnt have and what we had and they didnt have. I dont think its wholly right becauseand this may sound strange coming from mePresident Reagan I think will be seen very favorably by historians, mostly because hell be seen as the man who ended the Cold War, and Reagan didnt have to take the position of aggressive anti-Soviet behavior, but he did. Im not quite sure what their input was. There were quite a few members where I had lead day-to-day responsibility. Did Bentsen then become sort of a one-man legislative strategy group? Could you see at that point a set of priorities emerging with the candidate? I was defeated in my effort to become student body president, as, interestingly, was Clinton. This had been the thrust of the campaign, so expectations were very high that Clinton would come forward with a real economic program, a comprehensive program, and from the moment that all these folks were chosen the question was, what is that program going to be? I think so, yes. 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. I think it was over two days. And I dont accept entirely your formulation, even though I think theres a lot to it. 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. In a curious way hed compromised his own position. Im not in the Senate. Again, I had the benefit of Lloyd Bentsens views. It should have, but it hasnt. There were no violations of ethical guidelines, there was certainly no legal violation, and that proved to be pretty meaningless in the context of the uproar. There werent many people in the administration who fully understood it. I was working on the economic program, I was working on trade and certain departmental matters like Ive just described. Unfortunately, during the Clinton era ultimately there were four, five, or six independent counsels chosen to look into Bruce Babbitt and Ron Brown and some of the other people. That was the fundamental choice they made in devising the reform. At my sons school, on the floor where the history department is, each President gets a little tiny picture and about two lines. I mean, it can be in private, it can be in print, it can be any other way. 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. Bentsen also wanted the resignation of the Treasury General Counsel, who resigned too. The bills up on the Hill and it is the object of tremendous controversy and heat and light. He didnt say so, but supposedly he never does. For a variety of reasons, I dont think he had the pure luxury of just saying, Lets do NAFTA a year from now. I guess I probably began to help raise money, its a rough memory now, in the early fall, perhaps September of 91. So there was a lot of humor like that. Because it promotes a lack of confidence in financial markets and, for that matter, a lack of confidence in the business community, a sense that that administration doesnt know what its doing. 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. I cant remember allTom Brokaw was there, Davis Weinstock, Dick Beatty, Bob Rubin, George Katz, and/or Bernie Nussbaum were there. In the 12 years between Clinton and Carter, there had been famous acrimony between the Fed and the White House and the Treasury. There is a I did. It was just not very well run, as I recall it, until that time. You ultimately get into a room like this and you say, youd better start to train me, tell me how this happened. It pains me to recognize that thats 35 years ago, but no, it wasnt the case. Please. Actually it was mundane. Once you get NAFTA behind you, my guess is that there were further discussions at that point about what ought to be next and this is when healthcare becomes a priority. But you know, theres a real sense of the torch passing and history, and one had to be struck, even though Id been involved with Clinton from mid 91, by the youth and vigor that Clinton and Gore exuded, and Ive always personally liked the south, so I enjoyed being there, so I did go. So yes, the themes were in the State of the Union. In some measure. I mean, I saw a lot of the two of them and I became quite friendly with Hillary, and by the time I left the administration was actually much more friendly with Hillary than I was with the President, even though ironically Id obviously known him first. Chrystia Freeland, Financial Times US managing editor, interviewed Roger Altman, co-CEO of Evercore Partners. That was about the last time he didnt listen to Bentsen, but he should have. 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. Ill never forget that, he was a good guy, a real good old boy, I cant recall his name now, hes not in Congress any longer, but I arrived at the airport and he meets me and he says, Look, just get one thing straight, youre not going to say a word today about guns, nothing. I did, not before Congress, before the grand jury. But with regard to deficit reduction. But Lloyd Bentsen was in that league, top five or six or seven. I was on the board of the Childrens Television Workshop, now called the Sesame Workshop, the entity that produces Sesame Street and related childrens programming. 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. The second point is the nature of the key individuals chosen. So, the decision-making process was more than a bit chaotic, and the decision on the energy taxes was reflective of that. Not at the outside, but eventually, I came into the second camp because I began to understand the scope of the issue. Right off the bat in the administration, a group of us were deputized to try to lay the groundwork for a productive summit. Clinton had plied the waters of the Democratic Party with great assiduousness for many, many years. But thats the type of thing the Deputy Secretary sometimes does, or when there are problems with the IRS. The first vote on one of Clintons issues was a defeat, which presaged a lot of the weakness that then afflicted him during 1993. Were you involved in discussions at this point about what would be next in the queue for the administration, because there were some other. Then there were other people who went down and the press was following all this. We still joke about that today. It wasnt as simple as that. 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. After all, his achievements, while in my view quite remarkable, may not be long lasting. I did not have a crystal ball to the effect that he was going to make it and that the dominos were somehow going to fall in a certain way that enabled him to do so. Fifty Republicans had announced their opposition, 49 Democrats had announced their support, and Bob Kerrey was strolling around, going to the movies, which is what he was doing. I ran for president of the student body in the spring of my junior year, and he did the same in the spring of his junior year, which was one year following mine. So I felt very chastened by what Gene had said. Yes. A lot of people wanted to work on Capitol Hill or think tanks or with interest groups. That was the logical place because I served there before. 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. But the burden of my question was it would be a lot of the people whod voted for the economic package that youre putting in this position, right? No, no. And that kind of input isnt available during the campaign. Most of us cant name the last President who did balance the budget. By and large, most of the members of the Finance Committee in the Senate and the Ways and Means Committee in the House. Roger Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, the most active independent investment bank in the world today. You never saw, one time, Bob Rubin do that, not one time, after he left. I think history will probably record that as the most important achievement of President Clintons overall Presidency, not the vote itself of course, but the ultimate effects of it. He helped me in my efforts and then a year later I helped him in his. 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. Casey came to see Bentsen and essentially asked to be reappointed and Bentsen told him, No. I started doing a lot of the same thing Id done on the economic plan: radio shows, television stuff, running around the country. By the end of the year it had become a massive issue. 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. He observed to me right off the bat that this was going to be very complicated and no cakewalk, right off the bat. Thats one of the things that kind of surprises. But it was a rather fluid, floating group. I think we made some, but it was grudging and limited. Well, it was difficult in the beginning. And it was just fuel on the already roaring fire of Whitewater. I thought, perhaps not at that instant, but quickly thereafter, that what Clinton said to me about Wall Street economics was very funny. I think we had a sandwich or something and I took off and went back to the airport. Bentsen had told me from the first moment this thing was going nowhere. Hed been shot eight times. It was not an accident that he did that. Its actually enjoyable, its fun. I really believe it was that day that his view changed. Ill never forget, I went in to see one of them whod been shot eight times. How are people in the future to understand why this became such a polarized situation with Congress? 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. That ostracism certainly hasnt afflicted the Clinton alumni. Secretary Bentsen took a lot of heat not long after being sworn in saying hed like to see a stronger yen, and that touched off a lot of controversy. Arthur Burns was the chairman of the Fed. 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. 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. It wasnt any of those. 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. There was a concern that wed spill all the rest of our blood on NAFTA and have nothing left. I was given an office over in the Treasury. Then, in 1995, he formed Evercore. It was killed when Senator [Donald] Riegle, the chairman of the Banking Committee, announced that he would oppose it, so that was the end of that. So it was a quick learning experience for Clinton. The hearings process really kind of kicks it off. The answer to that is yes. Can you tell us how you first got to know Bill Clinton? 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. Was there awareness at that time, I mean, in the perspective of 2003, I recognize the world looks different. Doing concerted, multilateral action of the type youre referring to is really only appropriate in the midst of a crisis. But you think that by January 20th, this basic division of the fundamental economic policy. For one reason or other, Clinton developed some very powerful antagonists in the press, most notably Howell Raines of the New York Times editorial page, and the New York Times treatment of Clinton became a virtual industry unto itself. Well, nobody took more pain up front than Ronald Reagan. Greenspans name hardly came up during these discussions. He demonstrated his phenomenal grasp of policy issues, just through sitting there for many hours a day. But he was at least alive. Clinton was here, and Mrs. Clinton. So in the early period, Id have to go back and look at when the President laid the legislation forward, but I want to say it was first of March or something like that. You can do all kinds of approaches to anything. So its also part of the Treasury tradition to do it that way. Of course he has those who get invited to his ranch and those who dont. Finally the famous proposal comes forward and its put before the Congress. But anyway, he was quite a character. It may have struck people on the outside as unusual, but not if youd been around. I, and quite a few other people, had dinner with him, quite a few meaning 15 or so. It is high, because the toll it takes on your life is high and you either run out of money or you just burn yourself out, or you get separated from your family, or whatever it is. While at the University, Yes, but I dont think he thought it was going to be as tough on the Democratic side as it turned out to be. Evercore uses cookies to give you the best experience on our website. But yes, we had meetings in his hotel room at three in the morning. But, in any event, as soon as I flew back from Tokyo, I moved into this area in the old Executive Office Building they had cleared out and I was the person in charge of the war room, and it worked I think for five weeks give or take. 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. The time for horse-trading was over. By and large Bentsen talked to Clinton when Clinton called him.That was the way it worked. One, the recession of 91 and early or mid 92, the economy was performing poorly. I mean, the reasons why Japan has had such difficulty in terms of its domestic economy are not reasons that an agreement with the United States is going to importantly affect, no more than our signing a trade agreement with Japan that committed us to try to do more at home to pump up our economy would be a big element in whether we did or didnt ultimately see economic growth here. I think this had to be artfully crafted in order to get through. When you say the coordinator, you mean of the Presidents message? No, not at all. 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. I thought, All right, well get half a loaf. I was often at the National Economic Council meetings that deliberated on those. 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. We had some serious issues with the IRS. I was completelyclean bill of health from the independent counsel. I was just there to do the best job I could. You couldnt say to yourself, Well in the end hell be fine. Im not the best witness on that because I didnt see it or feel it, but there may well have been. It was quite an experience, in retrospect. Thats why I wonder whether there was some kind of perception, outside. WebRoger Altman: Formerly deputy Treasury secretary, Altman resigned Aug. 29, 1994 following revelations he tipped the White House off to criminal referrals made by I stayed overnight, went back the next day. Did you do any traveling with Clinton on the campaign around New York or outside of New York? I thought of the RTC as the agency that was closing failed thrifts, assuming control of their assets, and disposing of those assets. I would say we had a definite policy, we just didnt achieve too much of it. I was asked a second time to do it on the healthcare. Well, yes, Carter tried a version of that. Did you go to Little Rock for the election? Because they thought, If we hold those hostages very long at all after this man becomes President, we may be nuclearized. 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. 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. The meetings became sort of a phenomenon and some people thought they were great because they were so inclusive and here we were having opportunities to spend hours with the President. Secondly, the National Economic Council would meet very often for purposes of reviewing where this stood; I was on that as a standing member. Did he come to you with an idea about what he wanted to focus on with the economy or some of his primary domestic policies, or was this at this point still in the process of being formulated? It was really quite revealing of Clintons inexperience to do it that way, and, for that matter his style, a poor way to do it. Obviously he balanced the budget, now its unbalanced. But I dont recall encountering him at all. We made two or three trips to Japan and then there was the Tokyo Economic Summitthe G7 Summit in the fall of 93 which happened to be planned many years in advance for Tokyo. It was a bit of a love fest. Right now, again, were very far away from even the primaries still, let alone the general election, but right now the most active topic of discussion by the candidates by far is healthcare. Lets recast the question a bit. But the program wasnt structured that would give you half a loaf, was it? So I think Clintons own behavior did play a role in it and that in retrospect there would have been better ways for Clinton to have dealt with some of these things. Right, but if you take too much pain up front. We were very explicit. So theres no reporting responsibility, its treated as one office, a little bit like a corporate office of the chairman which includes the chairman, and the CEO, and the President and chief operating officer, and maybe even one or two others. 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 he didnt have the luxury of saying, Lets do it a year from now, as you often do with other things. 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. We began to have fundraisers toward the end of 91. If you think about his history, Bentsen had been a highly decorated war hero. Until there had been hearings and so forth you dont get much of a sense of that. 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