Japanese discussions were harder, but the G7 summit was fine, it was easy. As far as healthcare versus welfare reform? 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. Then we put on our battle armor and went back into battle. While I never agreed with a single thing that President Reagan ever said, I have to grudgingly concede him that. Any particular memories from that successful trip? Scientist, architect, botanist, Copyright 2023. He had good relations with certain members of Congress, and we needed that. At this point youre working on policy questions primarily? Ultimately they were in effect combined into one big wish list, and that wish list went forward. I think so, yes. Im not sure he would have known me really at all. Were there other international issues that occupied your time at Treasury, significant slices of your time? 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. 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. No, I went back the next day. The social side of it had almost nothing to do with it. Its curious to me, but thats how it worked. Remember, President Clintons first initiative, the stimulus plan, was defeated. He didnt, but he thought he could. I have to admit I didnt. Chrystia Freeland, Financial Times US managing editor, interviewed Roger Altman, co-CEO of Evercore Partners. I took it anyway. No, let me just correct the record. Did you have close relations with people in Cuomos operation, because I think, at least in the early stages, there was still a consideration that he might come out? There were a lot of people who did take that candidacy very seriously though, right? The Treasury has a wonderful history of its own and a great deal of pride suffuses those halls. You should have asked me about the vote, unless youve already talked to enough people about it. I then had the brilliant ideaIm saying this, obviously sarcastically, that I should inform the White House what those procedural alternatives were. I dont know why we were the earliest on the list. I spoke in this wonderful old hall, in the legislative building, legislative chamber, it was great. First of all, Clintonand I consider this a very important historical achievement, well see how it lastsmay turn out to have transformed the Democratic party. By the way, in any matter where the statute of limitations was about to expire, there was nothing specific about the Madison matter that was any different. We wont get into a philosophy, an argument, about causation, I think Reagans Presidency, a bit, goes against what youre saying, thats all. I would say that had probably as much to do with the onset of a partisan period as did the Andrews Air Force Base summit, but Im just playing amateur historian here. Bentsen managed himself with extraordinary skill. Having said that, I dont believe that affected the partisan approach to it. I think Clinton was better served by virtue of Perots presence in the campaign than without it. Then maybe half of them we discussed about this person, that person. I recall reading in one account that Clinton had worked on a kind of unusual cluster of issues as a candidate for student body president at the time. Im in the first camp, it was a great triumph, but Im not sure that history will accord him that. The second was the evolution of the deficit estimates during that period. Before we close, Id like to make one pitch though. Its actually enjoyable, its fun. No, I had very little contact with Mr. Clinton for roughly 20 years after leaving. We founded Evercore in 1995, on the premise that clients would be best served by an investment banking firm free of the conflicts of interest inherent to large, multi-product financial institutions. If youre Secretary of X, its pretty easy to become quite happily accustomed to the perquisites of that. The type of student attending each school at the time. I had a certain background but it didnt include experiences like that. She herself has expressed regret over them. We just kept the pressure on the best we could. 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. Ill give you an answer but Ill preface it by saying Im not sure my memory is quite right here. 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. It traces to Clintons legendary wonkishness. And there were obviously a whole host of people who were against it from day one and you werent going to change anybodys mind in the latter category. He was quite an unknown in New York, wasnt he, until he came, appeared, and talked? If Im not mistaken, we were looking at a $350 billion deficit, up from about $260 or something that we had been generally using during the campaign. I think it did. He helped me in my efforts and then a year later I helped him in his. Gene Sperling was in it. I dont think Id ever met her, but we were serving on the same board together and we became acquainted and occasionally talked about getting together some way or other. So it quickly became apparent that some elements of the plan were going to face heavy sledding. He wanted me to go see Bentsen. And Bentsen did make the call. I think that there wasagain, I dont follow this that closelybut there was a fast reaction in short-term rates when the Federal Reserve Board loosened, early on, in what appeared to be quid pro quoGreenspan offered some assurance to Congress that the Fed would be cognizant of the Federal. In fact, thats an important point. Thats not particularly my recollection, no. Right as it was up, the Wall Street Journal does a full-page profile on Bentsen, right here on the right. We were very explicit. But therein, to some degree, lay the opportunity for Clinton to re-establish his credentials as a man of conviction. Some of the cookies we use are essential for parts of the website to operate and cannot be switched off in our systems. I do believe it was able to make a difference. I should be very careful here. I went down there one day, came back the next day. No, this was in December. We believed our model would attract the most talented senior finance professionals to our firm. Was there a contrasting case in your experience in the Clinton administration where support was received both sides of the aisle and soughtwas it sought in the budget case? 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. I dont mean that facetiously. I think Henry Kissinger would still be Secretary of State if people had allowed him to be, whatever he thought of who he was serving. It certainly wasnt optimal. 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. Youve had Chiefs of Staff, Don Regan comes to mind, who see themselves as all-powerful and go too far to one end of the spectrum, and youve had others like Mack, who are too deferential and too averse to confrontation and go too far in the other direction. It was absolutely breathtaking, profoundly dramatic and unforgettable, absolutely unforgettable. I said I would and we went forward. Is the existence of a war room something. I have no evidence, and I think I would have had, that he went into that meeting with the expectation that hed come out the way he did. We had a couple hundred people there. He didnt like Clintons stimulus program. It wasnt evident to me the day after New Hampshire that he had recovered from it. There are some very famous stories about Bentsens war experience. So that was the revelation, so to speak, that occurred that day. We havent exhausted the topic of budgets and we want to talk further about that, but since youve already opened the door on this question about historical opposition and so forth, I thought that you might want to discuss your perceptions about how the existence of that institution changes the dynamic in Washington. I ran three times for student office while I was there. Of course, by November 94, many of the benefits of this program had not yet evolved. Bentsen could tell you, within 4 percent accuracy, what was going to happen to every one of these bills. So he didnt say, I know Im going to lose all these folks, but Im going to do it anyway. He did quite well. I want to ask one more question about the election because Ross Perots name hasnt come up and been explored. Yes, because obviously I was seen as somebody who had business credentials to some degree, conservative credentials, by Democratic standards at least. But that was what one did as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Well, it was supposed to become the law of North America on January 1st, wasnt it? Those meetings were, at one level, rather riveting, but at another level they were disorganized. When concessions needed to be made, this was before you get up too high, Russell referred to the point that deals had already been made. He really enjoyed it, stayed up every night till four in the morning, and believe me, I know that because I was going to his room at three in the morning with these various wordings. Yes, but Mack was entirely averse to confrontation and played a completely backstage role in these things, which is not really what a President needs. Remember, youre playing for four years, youre not playing for one year. Thats just exactly what I said. It wasnt trade; trade was not a big issue in the campaign. You see a lot of candidates you know arent going to work that way. I had known him just slightly. That was the day the earth moved and Clintons view changed. Whatever was going on on the deck of the Titanic was comparable, but it was absolutely frantic and incredibly dramatic and tense. I do recall some rushed discussions at the very end about what we do now and how we flesh out his policies, and I can recall talking to George Stephanopoulos the morning the convention ended about certain steps we were going to take now in terms of getting better organized on policy development and issues. You were responsible for organizing the war room. Its possible that President Clinton rues the fact that 9/11 didnt occur on his watch, because it was a transforming crisis and did transform, at least to date, the present President. I dont really think Bentsen knew me at all. But an awful lot of people love being Cabinet officers and leave only most reluctantly. During the preparation would you call that an organized group? Clinton moved quickly. People have made that mistake and theyve suffered from it. I did the best I could. Web446 Roger Altman Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO All Sports Entertainment News Archival Browse 446 roger altman The politics of the Btu tax per se versus other types of energy taxes, including the gas tax, which we ultimately fell back on, werent well considered. So he remained alive and, as we all know, recovered. Well, if you were to ask me for a moment when looking back on it, one could perhaps see that we were moving into a new period of partisanship, I would have chosen instead the [Robert] Bork battle, which I think changed quite dramatically the whole process on Supreme Court nominations and the grounds on which they were debated. It got more organized as 92 unfolded. As a Democratic President however, he could have vetoed the bill and it would have been sustained by Congress. Do you have anyyou were sort of one of the casualties of this campaign, but was the Whitewater thing separate from this hate stuff? My opponent is distracted by international and other matters. Youre an exception to this. It was a priceless education in the way the Congress and all the surrounding politics really worked. We had a macro economic task force. Right off the bat in the administration, a group of us were deputized to try to lay the groundwork for a productive summit. Why didnt that work, from your perspective? I was very involved in it but I was notspending probably two-thirds of my time on it. 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. He said he wanted to tell me that the President had decided to appoint Bentsen to be Secretary of the Treasury and Rubin to be head of the National Economic Council. 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. That wasnt a very long meeting. I doubt it. So the Congress decided to hold hearings on all aspects of Whitewater and, as everybody remembers, everyone from Maggie Williams to Harold Ickes to everybody had to testify. There were quite a few members where I had lead day-to-day responsibility. Everyone was thinking about one thing and not expressing it. Anyway. Sure. Nobody said to me, Hes there. I made two trips to Little Rock. I left the White House around April, took a couple of months off, and went back to New York. No. Were seeing it today. We came into office, the trade imbalance of payments deficit with Japan had risen to very high levels. President Clinton, in retrospect, his disavowals on some of his private life were almost certainly false and the way he handled the Lewinsky matter was about as bad as it could be because heessentially swore before the American people that he didnt do it, and of course then recanted. I worked in the White House another three or four months, worked on, for example, the bailout of Washington, D.C., and then the passage of the new control board type legislation and then my kids got out of school in June. No. 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. It turned out that the thing had really been left by the wayside and there was very little of the necessary planning that had gone into it and it was about two months off. On changes in the bill, unless they were truly minor, those were deliberated at the highest level. It was very effective because it was a group of roughly 20-25 people, working literally 19-20 hours a day with only one mission, and that mission was to get this bill passed. There were so many different Japanese Prime Ministers in that period I cant remember which one we had at that moment. 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. Oh sure, New York is, in terms of Democratic politics, not a terribly big town. So I felt very chastened by what Gene had said. Those are my exact words. Its a famous meeting in the sense that Woodward wrote a lot about it, other people have written about it. So I served in that job for give or take a year, and I never had a single meeting on an investigation nor did any of my predecessors, just wasnt done, wasnt necessary, and so forth. 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