Some time around 1989 or so, Hillary Clinton went on the board. Clinton had plied the waters of the Democratic Party with great assiduousness for many, many years. So there are the four main elements. Robert Altman reflects on his college years with President William J. Clinton, 1992 election, Treasury transition, budget plans, Whitewater investigation, and North American Free Trade Agreement. If I search my memory or some dusty file somewhere, I could probably come up with more names, but it was not a huge group. Everything imaginable. WebNot only are 10% of the U.S. House and Senate Jesuit-trained from Georgetown, but so are many of the world's political leaders, which should have you asking What are they really up to?" 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. Of course. But therein, to some degree, lay the opportunity for Clinton to re-establish his credentials as a man of conviction. Yes, we could have had that. But all Im trying to say is if you look at Lloyd Bentsens background, Rob Rubins background, and even to a much lesser extent my background, we knew about monetary policy and we knew about the role of the Fed. It was a priceless education in the way the Congress and all the surrounding politics really worked. But the main argument was economic. We were all trotted out in Little Rock on the same day. There was an acknowledgment, though, fairly early on that something needed to happen? There may have been, but I know I didnt feel it. So, to some extent, the President had put himself in a tough spot. Exactly. If nobody else has any more questions about that, the other trade issue that you were greatly involved with that we touched on only once or twice has been Japan. Bentsen had run for Congress at a very young age, successfully, was re-elected two or three times, then quit and went into business and was very successful in business. I ran three times for student office while I was there. Bentsen could tell you, within 4 percent accuracy, what was going to happen to every one of these bills. He may have been serving the President, but he hadnt been in public life for all those years, never lost an election, become Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, didnt become a legend in order to sully his own reputation, as he saw it, over some legislation that he thought was misguided from the first moment. Thats how politics works. You were responsible then for recruiting the people who were going to be in it? 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. 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. He didnt want to be involved in the daily ins and outs of those jobs. Were you at all involved in the development of the side agreements on environmental issues and. In a curious way hed compromised his own position. How did the decision-making go about to decide on these different components of the package? Why was that a federal regulatory issue? I mean, he seemed to be quite consistent about that, even though the rest of the field was, as I recall, quite a bit more protectionist. A lot of people didnt realize and I didnt entirely realize the regulatory responsibilities of the RTC at the time. No, it was not at all. Reagan had a group called the legislative strategy group, the LSG, which was intended, whether this is reality or not, to look at the legislative strategy or legislative implications of the policy as a part of the process, developing very soon after his inauguration. He demonstrated his phenomenal grasp of policy issues, just through sitting there for many hours a day. From that time forward, about 79 times out of 80 Clinton did whatever Bentsen said. 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. I think. Will policy differences be the reason that candidate X or candidate Y emerges with the nomination? I believe Perots presence helped Clinton because Perot kept saying how messed up the country was, so that actually helped the challenger rather than the incumbent. But youd been doing transition work for a month. It will be differences of style, differences of perception. 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. He did quite well. 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. The most frantic imaginable effort was going on during the five or six hours preceding that vote. I divided my time between the transition office and the Treasury. That was not a high point of the Clinton Presidency. I mean, Republicans are opposing it because its tax and spend, the President is upset about it because its Wall Street economics. No, this was in December. And also, the opportunity to finally address what the real economic situation and fiscal situation was. Then, I was in Tokyo. But its there on the record; everybody can read those reports. I sat next to Mrs. Clinton at dinner. There was very little interest in that. On changes in the bill, unless they were truly minor, those were deliberated at the highest level. Healthcare got the nod. No, but it wasnt just entirely that. Sure. I cant think of anything you didnt ask me, or anything I didnt say that I would have liked to have said, so with that exception. Theyre already heavily taxed, its their money, not the governments money and all of that, and if it works, nobody will remember that I opposed it. But my guess is that those kinds of. But I was briefed on the procedures the RTC had to follow here. He helped me in my efforts and then a year later I helped him in his. 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. It was a good-sized ballroom here in New York. I stayed down there for a day and a half, maybe 24 hours. No, but Clintons clear priority was, and was going to be, steps to stimulate the economy and indeed, as soon as he took office, he submitted a package of measures which constituted his stimulus program and they rather promptly went down to defeat. By the way, when the three-judge Washington panel that chose Fiske threw him out and replaced him with [Ken] Starr, Starr went back to the beginning and went over the entire thing again and came to the same conclusion. I believe Stan Shuman was there. Everything is susceptible to being phased in, to being cut back, to being pilot-programmed. Ive never either been attracted to that approach nor felt that it was an effective one. So those two circumstances are important as a starting point, the second one especially, because wed been assuming a certain deficit problem, and upon fresh review, it turned out to be much worse. I think John Kennedys famous line about Jefferson applies because he had nine simultaneous careers, and the Presidency was only one. Roger C. Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, which has become the most active independent investment bank in the world. Because Clinton very shrewdly realized the respective strengths of Bentsen and Rubin and put each in the right job. You were both involved then in student government. So we already had quite a taste of the Congressional dynamic and overall political dynamic. The answer to that is yes. Because they thought, If we hold those hostages very long at all after this man becomes President, we may be nuclearized. 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. Well, I dont think theyd like it. It certainly wasnt optimal. 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. Not necessarily. Once he decided he was for it, he really got into it. 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. So I guess wed like to hear the story about your involvement in both cases, focusing on your relationships with members of Congress, how the division of labor was, your relationships with the. There were certain others, I cant recall now, but a group of six or eight or nine, and we literally sat around with pieces of paper and drafts and hammered it out. I think it was serious as a political thing, meaning you had three candidates instead of two and of course, the dynamic was different. Not at the outside, but eventually, I came into the second camp because I began to understand the scope of the issue. Those things were at a peak in 94, just at the time healthcare was on the table. I think at the Pond House meetings there were also some of the Congressional leaders, werent there? Youre in such a good position to give us a comparative portrait of transitions internally. Were they talking broad strategy, were they keeping whip counts? Its very difficult to do that during a campaign. Were you privy to the conversations that he had? Did you stay in Little Rock for a while afterward? I believe Greenspan went to Little Rock. It doesnt make sense, it belies any grasp of history, and so forth. I had known him just slightly. I would say presided over, Id have to check the statistics, but probably the greatest period of economic prosperity in the entire century, or ushered in the greatest period of prosperity in the entire century. Some of the cookies we use are essential for parts of the website to operate and cannot be switched off in our systems. 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. Im not joking. I recall speaking about 20 minutes before the vote to Marjorie MargoliesMezvinsky,with whom I had developed a friendship, and it became evident to me that she was very reluctant but willing to vote for the bill. So I knew nothing about the substance of the Clinton case. I should have realized I was stepping into a potential mine field but I didnt, although I do have to say that I called my lawyer and asked him if there was any reason I shouldnt take this and he said, Yes, there are about 200 reasons. You look at the relationships he ended up having with a lot of people that he was initially close to and were central to his administration, whether its George Stephanopoulos or whoever else it may be. Some of them, yes. By the end of the year it had become a massive issue. The social aspect of it also involved here? It wasnt a great agreement. Id met Bentsen a few times. Dont ever let those conversations be public. Why didnt that work, from your perspective? If we have another Iran-Contra therell have to be an independent counsel, thered have to be. Mickey Kantor was in charge of the famous Little Rock Economic Summit. I mean, I just thought he was such a hero. There had been some minor event that day and he was asked what he thought of the latest developments in Iran and he said, I dont talk about barbarians. So by the time I had to do it again I wasnt particularly concerned. I view that as a very unfortunate decision the Democrats made, but that was a new low, or a new high, however you look at it, in partisanship. 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. There have been a lot of great American Presidents. There was no surprise. Mostly the latter. I was just there to do the best job I could. I think that had to do with the actual signing of the treaty. I guess I figured, were I to be appointed something, it would likely be in the Treasury, and perhaps, by process of elimination, nothing else seemed logical to me. Can you tell us how you first got to know Bill Clinton? Bentsen had known the then head of it, Albert Casey, whod been chairman of American Airlines, and didnt have a high regard for him. It was a very costly enterprise upfront and, as I recall from testimony we had from others, there was a big problem in that whatever savings would have been recorded as a part of this enterprise had actually been absorbed into the earlier budget deal. Secretary Bentsen was too important and had other things to do than to go down to Waco, Texas, and try to figure out what was going on there. he is one of famous Financial professional with the age 75 years old group. They just didnt believe it would work. One of the things that you mentioned that was in your portfolio was selling the budget package. So you wouldnt have had any involvement on Capitol Hill or anything like that at the time? I was completelyclean bill of health from the independent counsel. We nominated this guy, thought he was quite capable and in one of the wonderful ironies of Washington, the quixotic ironies of Washington, the Democrats defeated the nomination. As has been, as I said, so widely chronicled, the focus was on the economy because the economy was sluggish, in a recessionary state. Its rare that an issue divides the Democrats. I think this had to be artfully crafted in order to get through. But the two major currency accords, the Plaza Accord and the Louvre Accord, were done in times of crisis in the foreign exchange markets. Its not clear to me however that history will accord him that credit. None of the aspects of her role bothered me at all. 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. If you can think of a great President, a President who is seen as really great, who didnt have such a crisis, Id like to hear it, because I dont think there is one. I guess I probably began to help raise money, its a rough memory now, in the early fall, perhaps September of 91. The period during which Bentsens views werent treated with quite enough respect was a very short one. So maybe among the so-called populists there was a lot of anxiety as they saw this axis, the Bentsen-Rubin axis, develop and recognizing that both were relatively conservative. But it was really episodic, it wasnt regular. Kerrey made a quite dramatic speech, rather excoriating Clinton, urged Clinton to get back on the high road and so forth and then cast the vote and Gore cast the tie-breaking vote and thats how it happened. Did it come from DAmato, or what? It was just not the way to run the railroad. Was it his personality? Sure. So my wife and I flew down to Little Rock and I met with Clinton for about two hours. 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. But it was a mixture of considerable travel, considerable speaking, lots of radio and television shows, in some cases done locallyin other words, youre in St. Louis, youre doing them, or, alternatively from Washington where you go over to the White House and sit on a chair and do seven satellite feeds in a row, or five radio shows, or what have you. It wasnt so much between the political peopleReich wasnt a political person; he wasnt a campaign operator. I stay in touch with him. Was Bernard Nussbaum involved in the financing in this early period? During the day two or three people from the administration spoke to KerreyMack McLarty and Leo Panetta spoke to Kerrey. 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. The President was in a tough spot because he was hearing from a lot of people that the effort was too ambitious, but on the other hand, Mrs. Clinton was in charge of it. While at the University, But the next day, Monday, I was on a plane to Waco, Texas. But the presumption was that the head of the agency of course did know that. So I knew early on, but only because Lloyd Bentsen was in effect telling me. 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