We talked a little bit about the fundraising elements. Two questions, one of which was minor. You were both involved then in student government. I dont recall precisely, but Im sure Im right that Clintons standing in the polls was ebbing. Can you talk about Perots influence on the campaign? When the voting began, we did not know if we were going to win. We had an autos task force with certain members of the Clinton administration and certain Japanese counterparts on that. I think those discussions, including that particular one, in retrospect, had a considerable effect on him. 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. Were seeing it today. Im sure there are lots of aspects of the preparation plan. The only way he saved his life was to throw himself off the roof after hed been shot several times. Am I misremembering, did the President invite Mr. Greenspan, to sit in the gallery next to his wife when he delivered his economic policy. Were there any members in particular with whom you worked directly that you felt you were personally responsible for salvaging? We wont get into a philosophy, an argument, about causation, I think Reagans Presidency, a bit, goes against what youre saying, thats all. I think this had to be artfully crafted in order to get through. Well, that was, in retrospect, the Bill Clinton Show, and he demonstratedit was, I think, very clever in retrospect. And its not the right move to inform a Cabinet officer that his team is Mr. X, Miss Y, and Miss Z. If Im not mistaken, Paul Tsongas won New Hampshire? 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. I want to be sure that there is a clear picture of that because he cant offer it himself. Youve been good to give us so much time. But I think in Washington, except in dire emergencies, politics rules, and most Republicans had the view that they would rather die than vote for a tax increase. 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. There were so many exceptions and carve-outs and so forth from the final bill that you couldnt count them. Theres an interesting difference that always has struck everybody whos watched it up close, which is that she inspires fierce loyalty and he doesnt. Before we come back to this, I want to pose one question and that is about the Presidents style when he was working the phones with members of the House. So we had no legal violation and no ethical violation and I had come to the conclusion that this thing was over. 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. But an awful lot of people love being Cabinet officers and leave only most reluctantly. Theyd review it and youd go to a meeting where you received a 900-page memo, three quarters of which you didnt understand. Did you do any traveling with Clinton on the campaign around New York or outside of New York? So I spent a lot of time on healthcare. Let me give you an example that is appropriate to the present. Hes the first guy who stepped in defeated. some of these were extemporaneous, he had no notes, but he was quite an impressive speaker, I thought. You had been given a portfolio before that time? Bob Rubin was the ultimate financial market person, knew the role of the Federal Reserve so well. But was it a battle? 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. The Federal Government doesnt have much of a role in education. I spoke to the Oklahoma state legislature. The election occurred and about a week later Reagan was getting a haircut in California and he came out of the barbershop. I have to confess it was the spring of my senior year and I was paying a little more attention to girls and golf than I was to the normal ebb and flow of events on the campus. 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. This is a transcript of the interview, which you may watch here. Who was the New York group that helped him with fundraising and maybe also with policy? I long ago decided that trying to figure out how these election contests are going to ultimately resolve themselves is impossible; so I just recalled fondly the time wed known each other back more then 20 years earlier, I liked him, and in my case it was as simple as that. Anything in particular you recall that can flesh out the record? 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. Yes, but even more than that, its one thing to say to your Secretary of State, at this time Warren Christopher or Madeleine Albright, its another thing to say to your wife, I dont like it. But the main argument was economic. Remember, I was there during the 1963-67 period. My opponent is distracted by international and other matters. Nothing, zero, never did, never would have. Primarily I had learned what doesnt work, and I had learned a couple of thingsyou can tell, I think, when youre exposed to a candidate enough times, whether hes going to work out there as a retail politician, as they say, an outdoor politician, and when he isnt. 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. 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 social aspect of it also involved here? One of the reasons why the ultimate votes on his economic plan were as close as they could possibly be, one vote in the House and tie vote in the Senate, was because he was dealing from weakness. That raises the question then of the people he was meeting with here. It was, in any normal historical context, yes, right of center because it focused on deficit reduction, tighter fiscal policy, more conservative budgeting. But everybody felt such a part of it because they were sitting right there. Senior Management, U.S. Investment Banking and Evercore ISI businesses are conducted through Evercore Group L.L.C., a member of. I mean I hired really good lawyers, and they told me pretty early in the process that on the substance there was no issue, that you have to worry about the fact that in this country prosecutions can become very political, but they just didnt think that it was much of an issue on the legal precedence and the substance. Could you see at that point a set of priorities emerging with the candidate? One of the initial ideas was an energy tax. You couldnt do that. He had a great time. You know, she made comments like I could have stayed home and baked cookies but I decided to be a real person, which served to severely antagonize a lot of traditionalists. No. The Republicans quite shrewdly picked out some that didnt make sense and off the bat marshaled a very focused attack on it. and he said, No. The election took place on the first Tuesday of November. Were you consulting with the President occasionally after you left Washington and came back to New York? 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 mean, we had these discussions, we had these ways to measure progress and so forth, that sometimes alarmed economists in the United States because they seemed protectionist. In the early period, there was a lot of discussion of broad strategy, how to create support for deficit reduction as a whole, how to talk about the program, what type of interest groups we needed to particularly work with and work on. 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. A few questions about that. I knew Paul Tsongas and he was a nice man, a good man, but he was not a good politician and I didnt see Paul Tsongas being the nominee. Might have been established by Washington. He predicted them. I spoke in this wonderful old hall, in the legislative building, legislative chamber, it was great. 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. Georgetown was a semi-serious school. But you can imagine the irony of that comment because the Republicans to a man were opposing it because it is tax and spend economics, and the President is saying its going to go down because it is Wall Street economics. Of course, by November 94, many of the benefits of this program had not yet evolved. There was not a war going on. Were you helping write drafts of Putting People First, platform areas? Were they talking broad strategy, were they keeping whip counts? I had known him just slightly. 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. 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 thought Perot was a flake, I think Perot is a flake, so I didnt take him terribly seriously. You didnt have to spend a lot of time with Lloyd Bentsen to know that he wasnt going to be shunted aside. I dont know who was, and some people say there werent any, but I wasnt, even though I was always described that way, always baffled me. [Mikhail] Gorbachev was an enormous free gift to Ronald Reagan. Everybody was sitting in a room for the endless hours that have been so widely written about, which was quite a chaotic, disorganized process and not particularly Presidential process. 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. So I knew a little bit about what was worth doing and what wasnt. I think John Kennedys famous line about Jefferson applies because he had nine simultaneous careers, and the Presidency was only one. What external factors were at work here? Did you keep up with him when your paths parted? There were ten or twelve or fourteen or fifteen, big numbers. It was absolutely breathtaking, profoundly dramatic and unforgettable, absolutely unforgettable. I dont think I would have known otherwise. So were interested in hearing about. Clinton made an error, didnt take it. Of course that depends on the moment in question. How big a group was doing this recasting? 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. His popularity had sunk to low levels. He knew that if we lost this vote it was a severe blow. How difficult was it to do what you were doing in an environment where Mario Cuomo was sort of floating around trying to figure out. Then late one afternoon, early evening I guess, 7 oclock, in the transition office in Washington, Warren Christopher called me. Im a little too close to this, because Im not sure how history will view it. So I think it was quite smart to be done then. I dont know whether his Presidency will be seen as one of the most important or transformative in American history. Yes, there was a big debate about whether it should be healthcare or NAFTA. The White House decidedwell, there were certain people who were obviously going to be in it. That was a factor. Did you go to Little Rock for the election? I dont think this is what it really says, but I suppose in the distant lens of history, Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War. Were there different views? Well, when we actually re-did Putting People First, we went to Little Rock and worked on it for a few days. The most frantic imaginable effort was going on during the five or six hours preceding that vote. So Japan arguably has been in a 12- or 14-year slump, but at that time the weakness in the Japanese economy was seen as just cyclical, not structural. 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. That was his answer. President Clinton, Democrat, nominated a Republican to this job and the Democrats defeated his nomination. I thought, All right, well get half a loaf. He helped me in my efforts and then a year later I helped him in his. One, every morning of course, there was the senior staff meeting at the White House. 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. You had been asked to be a part of that enterprise. Did you know him, you said you hadnt known him before then? I was often at the National Economic Council meetings that deliberated on those. What are the lasting accomplishments, the lasting legacies of this administration, regardless of whether the historians are going to pick up these strains as being historically important or flamboyantly important enough to elevate Clinton into an upper- echelon Presidency? So you wouldnt have had any involvement on Capitol Hill or anything like that at the time? I really believe it was that day that his view changed. I, and quite a few other people, had dinner with him, quite a few meaning 15 or so. The questions from all these different parts of the countryOregon, Louisiana, Michiganwere all the same. Bentsen had a lucidits hard to describe how lucid Bentsens observations always were. I liked him and we had a certain history together, and I was strongly of the view that it was time to get the Republican Party out of the White House after 12 years. 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 sounds like Bentsens Congressional or legislative savvy was not being availed of in these chaotic meetings, the policy-making meetings. 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. During the day two or three people from the administration spoke to KerreyMack McLarty and Leo Panetta spoke to Kerrey. Once he decided he was for it, he really got into it. Thats something we dont have a lot of information about. 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. 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? 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? The political process requires an outcome. Dont ever let those conversations be public. So there was not a war of the type that has so often been written about, just not true. I was struck from the beginning that Clinton was blessed with a very weak field, which, for example, is not the case today. He wanted me to go see Bentsen. No, he was working the Hill like everyone else, but he was important. Most of what people today look back on as the early economic policy of the Clinton administration, in my view, was formulated post-election. So there was not any anxiety or uncertainty within the core group of people involved in economic policy making about how this might fit in or. Obviously Sam Rayburn. He has difficulty speaking. Of course, there was Leon Panetta, and Bob Rubin and Lloyd Bentsen, Alice Rivlin, Laura Tyson, myself, Gene Sperling, those were really the main members. There have been a lot of great American Presidents. In general, no. The reason I posed the question the way I did is that since World War II theres been bipartisanship in Presidential leadership on free trade. But you ended up doing a lot of strange things. Its early 94 and the process on the healthcare initiative begins. Secretary [William] Simon spent hours with me, which is quite odd in retrospect since I was 32. 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. As a Democratic President however, he could have vetoed the bill and it would have been sustained by Congress. It pains me to recognize that thats 35 years ago, but no, it wasnt the case. Bob Dole. By the end of the year it had become a massive issue. I worked very closely with Bob Kerrey, with Senator [Max] Baucus, who had such a problem with the gas tax. Then in the latter part of 93 I think, Whitewater began to surface, I think it was late 93. Mrs. Bentsen responded. The vote was really the most dramatic moment I ever experienced in six-and-a-half years of government service. It was just not very well run, as I recall it, until that time. He had good relations with certain members of Congress, and we needed that. So the fact that if we were sitting here in 2053, that a President 54 years ago balanced the budget wouldnt mean a heck of a lot to us, right? 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. But I didnt have any knowledge of this stuff. Somebody was wrong. The Senate Finance Committee is the most powerful committee, Bentsen had been chairman for quite a few years, was seen universally as a very effective, powerful chairman. 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? And, to some degree it was also, of course, for Clinton to take the measure of certain people he might be appointing. Did it succeed? But unfortunately the real show was about to begin, which I didnt realize, which was the Congressional hearings. He is a trustee of MIT and serves on its Governance Committee. 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. Thats a good point, but thats because there were some people whod been around the track. But its interesting to put it into perspective. It was a successful fundraiser. So I think you had a President who was seen as very slickand he had that reputation before he became Presidentand then this upsurge in partisanship generally. But the two major currency accords, the Plaza Accord and the Louvre Accord, were done in times of crisis in the foreign exchange markets. 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. Exactly. There was no real reason for that, it was just fate, happenstance, just the case that not many of them did. Of course, any situation like that always has its humor. They were taking, to some degree, a thousand-year view. Bentsen said, Youre going to ask for this, and youre going to get this, meaning that. Why a war room? But there were some deputies, Harold Ickes came in maybe six months or soIm trying to remember when that first shakeup with the deputies was. Fourth, I recall that the economic forecasts for 93 were not very heartening. Is that a fair assessment? But there was the issue of the Clintons association with it and the fact that Madison Guaranty had made loans to the actual Whitewater Development Company, and the question of whether those loans had been made under pressure from the Clintons and in fact whether [James] McDougal, who ran it, had defrauded the depositors in cahoots with the Clintons. In other words a handful of conservative Democrats whose votes we had to have because we had no Republican votes. But it wasnt political on one hand, policy on the other, just different ideologies. Roger C. Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, which has become the most active independent investment bank in the world. Im sure there are numerous aspects of that that the administration given a chance would like to do over, to prepare better, and it was a team that didnt have a lot of legislative experience, although, in the case of Panetta and Bentsen, it had a couple of very strong elements. Lets face it, I mean, the highlight of that ticket was Bentsen in 1988. Bentsen and Dole were very close friends, which is a measure of the stature that Bentsen had. Did Senator [Edward] Kennedy figure at all as a help or a hindrance or what in the budget battle, he wasnt really a key player? Very, very intensive, one of the most intensive things Ive ever been involved in. Those are my exact words. 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. Mike Levy, our person, whod been Senator Bentsens primary legislative staffer, was a true pro, and that particular axis worked like a charm. Dont ever talk down your currency; dont ever quarrel with the Federal Reserve Board. Doing concerted, multilateral action of the type youre referring to is really only appropriate in the midst of a crisis. There werent many people in the administration who fully understood it. Founder and Senior Chairman | I think there were missed opportunities, yes; I dont believe they would have made a big difference however. It struck outsiders as the administration never passed up an opportunity to say, This is the preserve of the Federal Reserve. Mean, the highlight of that because he had good relations with members... 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