But, no, they couldnt have been more cooperative. Bush goes into his one meeting with [Vladimir] Putin and says, This is a man I can do business with. The Secretary of the Treasury is not regularly informed of investigations that the Secret Service is doing, unless theres some special emergency reason to do it. Some of the things on the wish list made a lot of sense, but some of them didnt. Mickey Kantor was in charge of the famous Little Rock Economic Summit. Some of the cookies we use are essential for parts of the website to operate and cannot be switched off in our systems. Phil Gramm, Ill never forget, predicted that it would usher in a new depressionI mean depression, not recession. Rob Rubin and I went together, Bob Reich was there, Gene Sperling was there, Bob Shapiro was there. But I dont really think that was the reason that he voted for it, but only an hour before the vote in the Senate did we know we had his vote. Lets face it, I mean, the highlight of that ticket was Bentsen in 1988. Abraham Lincoln saved the union. 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. Then about three weeks later I was testifying as a regular matter on the RTC, I guess it was semiannual oversight hearings on the RTC, and Senator Gramm or Senator [Chris] Bond, Senator Gramm I think, asked me if Id had any contact with the White House about this whole matter. Its always a mistake to get in any kind of hassle with the Federal Reserve Board, always. And deficit reduction was his top priority, a focus at the top? Was there a representative of the campaign. There was no committee per se but he had a few people who were involved at that point and doing something like looking at Putting People First and editing it, and then just these periodic conversations we would have on the fly. 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. I remember that day. Although the President really thought he could convince more Democrats of the merits of NAFTA than he ultimately did. But I didnt have any knowledge of this stuff. But part of our efforts were to get the Japanese to agree to certain pump-priming measures at home to lift domestic demand, increase the Japanese demand for imports, and better balance the current account relationship. We still joke about that today. I wasnt making a distinction between Clinton and his predecessors, but rather making a distinction between Clinton and his successors since there wont be any more. Some time around 1989 or so, Hillary Clinton went on the board. Can you tell us about how that unfolded, your perceptions of Mrs. Clintons role in all of this? Who was the New York group that helped him with fundraising and maybe also with policy? I dont. The Regency Hotel. And then, of course, the political people in the White House: George Stephanopoulos of course, and others in the White House. There was a whole bunch of work going on on that but I was completely preoccupied with the Presidents economic program and trying to get it passed, not just during the war room period but before that. No. The Times, which is typically, of course, a Democratic-leaning paper, was Clintons severest clinic throughout his whole Presidency, and on Whitewater went crazy. It wasnt between the political people and the policy people, it was among the policy people and involving some of the political people. I did, not before Congress, before the grand jury. 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? Can you tell us how you first got to know Bill Clinton? There was, I cant remember exactly, but we had some innumerable number of economists of all stripes and persuasions in favor of this. Youre serving your country. I was elected twice vice president of my class. So heres a person who knew how to manage himself. They didnt want tickets to the Kennedy Center, they wantedI want this for my tomato farmers, or I want this for my citrus growers. Right off the bat in the administration, a group of us were deputized to try to lay the groundwork for a productive summit. It just depended on the size of the concession. He managed himself beautifully and with great self-control, and Clinton had very little self-control. I was not. There was a stimulus package that dwindled, right? None of the aspects of her role bothered me at all. The only way he saved his life was to throw himself off the roof after hed been shot several times. I dont know how many people would have the political courage to do that, but I know I wouldnt have. Did you get the sense that this is true? 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. But there was a divide, so to speak, in the administration between those who felt that we should try to remake the healthcare system in this country in one fell swoop and those who felt we should pursue an incremental approach. Ill give you an answer but Ill preface it by saying Im not sure my memory is quite right here. Does that mean that the first initiative of the new President, should he, she, be a Democrat be healthcare? Well, not really. I mean, by that time, the group that was advising him on economic policy had become reasonably well set. Oh yes, sure. [ALTMAN - comments on the message as to Can you talk about Perots influence on the campaign? Were you privy to the conversations that he had? I believe, as I say, it was either the day of or the day after Gennifer Flowers had given her press conference. 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. The RTC had to choose between allowing the statute of limitationsto expire; filing charges, criminal charges; or, as often happens, entering into a so-called tolling agreement, where if youre the party under investigation, you voluntarily agree that the RTC can circumvent the statute of limitations because you believe that if they have more time theyll ultimately decide to exonerate you and you dont want them to be forced to make a decision about filing or not filing charges. In the first two years of the Clinton administration, they had about four Prime Ministers, pretty hard to get anywhere in that circumstance. 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. Had run successfully for Vice President. Altman Thats true, yes. That happened, I want to say, late 93, that his nomination was effectively killed. I was defeated in my effort to become student body president, as, interestingly, was Clinton. Were you involved in that effort? But anyway, he was quite a character. Carter had the famous $50 rebate, which became the object of much derision ultimately. I have a very old-fashioned view about that. These cookies do not store any information that directly identifies you. Sure. But that moment was quite amazing. So its clear that the idea about deficit reduction and fiscal policy takes root really during this transition. Yes, he did. And I also think that theres a certain sense of loyalty among the people that are currently serving in this administration, which is more in keeping with tradition, than the Clinton folks, or many of them I should say, brought to it. You had that, and then the legislative group, meaning Howard Paster and his counterparts from Treasury and Commerce and so forth, would meet every afternoon. Three-quarters of the people who go into the Cabinet never want to leave it, its great being a Cabinet officer. Those things were at a peak in 94, just at the time healthcare was on the table. 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. So two points: one, I support what the President did and I think he deserves a lot of credit for it. I spoke to the Oklahoma state legislature. She wasnt a participant in those. Its very puzzling to me how that could happen when the man had such an obvious gift for feeling peoples pain and a very strong public presence. But in retrospect he basically decided in his simple-minded way that he was going to grind the Soviet Union right into the dust, and he did. It occurred around 96, 97, but in the early stages of the Clinton years we didnt have a currency crisis. He was the head of the transition together with Vernon Jordan. Yes. Did you think that they took those claims seriously, or was this pure politics? 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. So Clinton wisely determined that this was something that Bentsen ultimately had to make the call on. 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 wouldnt necessarily accept that. 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 you think about his history, Bentsen had been a highly decorated war hero. At the time we were working on it there was a sense on the Japanese side that it was a zero-sum game. There was a camp around that view. One of the many stunning things about it is the fact that none of those Republicans paid a price of any kind for that. I dont know. 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. The two camps were right there sitting in front of the President for six hours at a time. You referred earlier to Garys question that most of the decisions that Clinton made about his priorities came post-election, but the process. You said earlier you were involved raising some money, but also providing some advice and guidance on economic policy. Bentsen said, Youre going to ask for this, and youre going to get this, meaning that. Then once he started to make the rounds in New York, he generated very considerable positive reaction and became self-fulfilling, and raising money for him became quite a bit easier. 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. But I only began to spend heavy time on that after the August passage of the Presidents economic program. I moved over to the White House, was given a strange assignment, which was to go run this thing called the Summit of the Americas which occurred in December of 94, which was this meeting of literally 35 heads of state in Miami for three days to talk about why you would have a hemispheric free trade agreement. For the finance minister of an industrialized country to talk down his own currency always proves to be a mistake, always. This wont help you because its not very original, but theres something about President Clinton that had the effect of rubbing salt on a wound as far as his opponents were concerned. Today, we serve a prominent and diverse set of clients and investors, including leading multinational corporations, large institutional investors and financial sponsors, and high net worth individuals. Im not quite sure what their input was. Any meaningful change in the bill, particularly if were talking about the last month or two, was only done with the approval of the President. It wasnt so much between the political peopleReich wasnt a political person; he wasnt a campaign operator. He knew what the House would do. Do you have the perception that there were some other instances where maybe this wasnt done? We recommend you to check the complete I mean, Im raising some money now for one of the other candidates and the degree of difficulty today as compared to at the same point 91 wasnt any greater. Definitely working on personnel. I want to be sure that there is a clear picture of that because he cant offer it himself. I know I didnt and I was very involved in trade policy as a whole because much of our trade policy involved Japan and I was very involved in that. Well, how do you know? The President made a decision he was going toand he discussed this during the campaign at lengthbe more aggressive with Japan to have a fairer, more level playing field. As I recall the campaign of 1992, there were lots of policy debates amongst the Democrats. There may have been, but I know I didnt feel it. He observed to me right off the bat that this was going to be very complicated and no cakewalk, right off the bat. 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 think less well than he was treated while he was in office. WebRoger Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, the most active independent investment bank in the world today. There were probably 25 major separate deals negotiated to win the passage. I think Clinton will come out pretty well. Well, health insurance reform was going to be very complicated, no matter how you cut it, because 85 percent of the people are already insured and only 15 percent are not, but welfare reform is something where huge numbers of people have opinions, even though they dont collect welfare. The first vote on one of Clintons issues was a defeat, which presaged a lot of the weakness that then afflicted him during 1993. Did you stay in Little Rock for a while afterward? I dont recall precisely, but Im sure Im right that Clintons standing in the polls was ebbing. [Mikhail] Gorbachev was an enormous free gift to Ronald Reagan. I also think Clinton knew he was going to go up against some of his oldest allies, whether it was Marian Wright Edelman, whomever it was, in terms of welfare reform, and was prepared to do it, but wasnt really looking forward to it. For some people the idea was, a southern Governor almost by definition has a better chance than a lot of other candidates. I then had the brilliant ideaIm saying this, obviously sarcastically, that I should inform the White House what those procedural alternatives were. I would say it was something like this. Thats how I feel about it. I dont mean that facetiously. A lot of time of the National Economic Council was spent on it. Clinton, as we all know, is very open, but also a very undisciplined guy. What political or personal characteristics does she have that he doesnt have, what does she bring to the. My testimony was rather a highlight of that. You can do all kinds of approaches to anything. 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. Japanese discussions were harder, but the G7 summit was fine, it was easy. WebRobert Altman's House (former) Malibu, California (CA), US Like Tweet Share Pin The film director, known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized Well, that was, in retrospect, the Bill Clinton Show, and he demonstratedit was, I think, very clever in retrospect. The first thing that we typically do is a quick voice identification so that the transcriptionist will know whos talking at any given time.Im Russell Riley, the project leader for the Clinton Presidential History Project. TR, extraordinarily colorful President. 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. 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. So it was just a very unusual evening. I spoke in this wonderful old hall, in the legislative building, legislative chamber, it was great. I was often, or at least periodically, talking to members of the administration but not to the President. To make a long story short, of course we all hired lawyers and so forth and we were brought before a grand jury. We believed that by maintaining the highest standards of excellence we could create a firm unlike any other in terms of capabilities to advise on highly complex strategic transactions, dedication to our client and our experience and professionalism. His popularity had sunk to low levels. If Im not mistaken, Paul Tsongas won New Hampshire? I dont think anybody during the campaign expected that Clinton would turn out to be the deficit hawk that he did. There had been a pre-election transition organization, and Im trying, Jim, to remember who headed up that operation. I was just in awe of people like that. So that the link in Clintons mind between deficit reduction and stimulus disappeared when it got into the political arena. I suppose everyone has his own definition of intimate, but by any standard Im familiar with, I was not an intimate of Clintons. I think that had to do with the actual signing of the treaty. But anyway, in retrospect it was a very bad idea. The Federal Government doesnt have much of a role in education. Here we are in June 2003 and the election as we all know is November 04, so its 16 months or so Georgetown was the equivalent of a placid, slow-moving river and Chicago was the equivalent of a roaring torrent. So anyway, within a few days, all of us who had anything to do with the RTC from the point of view of the Treasury were subpoenaed by Fiske. We had an autos task force with certain members of the Clinton administration and certain Japanese counterparts on that. They just didnt do it. So he was frantically calling members of Congress as various requests came in for him to do so. So, third, economic policy was number one. You sit down with the leaders of your own party in the Congress, ultimately with the entire leadership, and then you learn a little bit about the realities that you face from the legislative point of view. Im not sure. There was concern that we had already spilled an enormous amount of blood on the economic plan. I stayed overnight, went back the next day. It was hard to make any progress at all because the Japanese really didnt want to agree to any of this. Thats how politics works. To this day, I have a much closer relationship with her than I do with him. Why? He said, What do you want to do? The buzz on Clinton, even then, among those few following it, was positive. 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. So I knew nothing about the substance of the Clinton case. 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. Did he interact comfortably with the other leaders at the summit? August passage of the Clinton case not mistaken, Paul Tsongas won new Hampshire he... Should he, she, be a mistake to get in any kind for that Federal Board. There sitting in front of the concession can not be switched off in our systems so clear! Didnt feel it there had been a highly decorated war hero his top priority a... A time doesnt have, what does she have that he had a focus at the we. 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