The President and Vice President, I think it was Leon Panetta, and myself, one other person, he and I were standing there, looking out, it was a beautiful August night, not too hot, and it was just an amazing moment. Chrystia Freeland, Financial Times US managing editor, interviewed Roger Altman, co-CEO of Evercore Partners. In other words, Clinton believed that he could charm anyone if he wanted to and Bush believes the same thing. Does that resonate with you? You look at the turnover that she hador in her case did not haveon her staff, and the turnover that he had. It was just an evolution of the prior role. Greenspans name hardly came up during these discussions. But that battle was resolved in favor of the revolution, the most sweeping alternative, and I dont really have a lot to add beyond whats been written. 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. Rubin was well known as an economic conservative, and Bentsen, of course, had a very long legislative record, which was in the same direction. We had some serious issues with the IRS. In a curious way hed compromised his own position. Help us understand why he would elect to move NAFTA at this point? I hadnt been parachuted in from some distant spot without any such relations. 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. So the experience of visiting these guys, some of whom were right on the edge, made tremendous impact on me. I called him and said Id be interested in helping him in some form if there was a way to do that, and then one thing let to another and I got involved, not long thereafter, in his campaign, both from a fundraising point of view and from the point of view of economic policy and issue development. Web446 Roger Altman Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO All Sports Entertainment News Archival Browse 446 roger altman He was on a roof, about an 8-foot-high roof. But my role was shaped largely by two things: one, Bentsen and what Bentsen wanted; and two, the fact that I had a reasonably close relationship with the White House. In any event, we didnt have a currency crisis at the time of that summit, or really didnt have one until the very middle, latter stages of the Clinton years. Then the reality is, it seems to me, that most Presidencies, Im sorry, great Presidencies, are forged in crisis. Having watched very carefully what Bob Carswell, who served for three plus years of the four Carter years as Deputy Secretary, did in that role, and that was actually rather different than my role. 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. I think it did. For some people the idea was, a southern Governor almost by definition has a better chance than a lot of other candidates. Yes, but typically you wouldnt resort to that with relative stability in the exchange markets, and we did have relative stability. Does that mean that the first initiative of the new President, should he, she, be a Democrat be healthcare? Then we ended up for some strange set of reasons having a giant turnout and he wowed them. It was a very unusual evening, because there was a sense, as I say, we were interring the candidate. No, first of all, it wasnt his focus. We can all speculate. 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. and I said, I just want to serve.Im not going to give you a speech about why I should be Secretary of the Treasury. Were now in the pre-election period. You havent told us about your own appointment. 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. I consider that another important legacy, since not that many Presidents of the 20th century have it. Those are two different questions, Id rather answer the will be question. But its just one of those periods in Washington when partisanship is at a peak. You indicated that the President did it right with Treasury. Senator Kennedy was for it from day one. Now remember, Clinton had said he was going to cut the deficit in half. He said, Its up to you. Bentsen knew Clinton wouldnt get anything else if he didnt. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, Notice of Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunity. Youd worked in a couple of campaigns before this one, or youd been involved in campaigns. You asked me when the most important policy development occurred and I would say there are several answers to that but number one would be post election, not pre-election. In fact, Carters very first initiative was his stimulus program, neither of which incidentally succeeded, both of which were dropped and failed entirely. You were in Tokyo when the President went over? So I had that meeting with Clinton. Georgetown was a semi-serious school. People forget that, even today. So the dynamic between the two was quite an interesting dynamic and quite quicklyto come to your pointafter the stimulus plan went down, Clinton began deferring to Bentsen on everything. No, there were 20-22 people there. Ford actually attended regularly, I dont mean every day, but regularly, and it was just a version of what Clinton did. That was just how all Presidents should act. Secretary Bentsen didnt know about it but a lot of other people did, and nobody paid much attention to it. Clinton had plied the waters of the Democratic Party with great assiduousness for many, many years. 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. Im Jim Young. Phil Gramm, Ill never forget, predicted that it would usher in a new depressionI mean depression, not recession. I believe it was a five-year statute of limitations and the expiration date was January 94 or February or something like that. But then of course, I went home, my family was away, you walk home, you walk into your house, and its time to watch ESPN [Entertainment and Sports Programming Network] or whatever you do. You can do all kinds of approaches to anything. Can you tell us generally about your role during the general election campaign? But by historians. I, and quite a few other people, had dinner with him, quite a few meaning 15 or so. Do you recall at what point you felt that there was some momentum being reestablished? I think we had a sandwich or something and I took off and went back to the airport. You know, you call in for five minutes apiece and theyre all lined up. He made quite a bit of money and then ran as a big long shot again, initially against Ralph Yarborough for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in 1970, upset Yarborough, then beat George H. W. Bush. Is this time for horse-trading? So, the decision-making process was more than a bit chaotic, and the decision on the energy taxes was reflective of that. Was there anything particular in his record in Arkansas that became sticking points with people in the community that you were attempting to raise money from? During the transition period, you are formally involved in the transition effort. So he didnt have the luxury of saying, Lets do it a year from now, as you often do with other things. But as often happens, there is a moment when positions shift. So its really a role that varies from Secretary to Secretary in terms of what that Secretary wants, and thats just a history of it. Were still in the transition period, and now may be the appropriate time to talk about the process by which deficit reduction becomes a clear priority item over some of the other things that were talked about during the course of the campaign. It was a good-sized ballroom here in New York. So Fiske came to the conclusion that nothing had happened, Starr came to the conclusion nothing had happened, and certainly, if he could have found anything, I think he would have been motivated to push it. A lot of people wanted to work on Capitol Hill or think tanks or with interest groups. On changes in the bill, unless they were truly minor, those were deliberated at the highest level. She herself has expressed regret over them. He thought he could win over the majority of the Democrats, for example in the House, on NAFTA. Did you have a lot of organizational responsibilities, or it was a going concern when you. I should have said I was either going to or not going to, but anywaySo that meeting came and went and at least nobody at the Treasury thought much about it. What really happened was that the stimulus was entirely spending-side stimulus. We had an autos task force with certain members of the Clinton administration and certain Japanese counterparts on that. I think well probably want to pick up there and find out about that experience. Thats why the current President may turn out to be lucky. It begins I think with the economic and fiscal circumstances that the administration faced, and two in particular. Scientist, architect, botanist, Copyright 2023. Roger C. Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, which has become the most active independent investment bank in the world. 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. 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. Well, how do you know? For the finance minister of an industrialized country to talk down his own currency always proves to be a mistake, always. I guess I probably began to help raise money, its a rough memory now, in the early fall, perhaps September of 91. Maybe there was, I wasnt privy to that or exposed to that. I should be very careful here. That notion took hold at that meeting. I really think its just that basic. Certainly the appointment of someone with the stature of Rubin signaled that this was not going to be a junior level kind of a thing and it was not going to be headed by one of the usual powerful people, OMB [Office of Management and Budget] or Secretary of the Treasury. Carter did the same thing but much lower key. After all, thered been only two Democratic Presidents in the last 25 or 30 years and theyd both been southern Governors. 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. We wont get into a philosophy, an argument, about causation, I think Reagans Presidency, a bit, goes against what youre saying, thats all. What political or personal characteristics does she have that he doesnt have, what does she bring to the. I also told him, which was quite a mistake, that I was thinking about recusing myself from the case because I realized that there was such a conflict here between being a member of the administration on one hand and being a Federal regulator on the other. There were some enormous differences. I dont know this, but I suspect that was decided largely between the President and Mrs. Clinton. Is this a case where the political people were encouraging him to hold his ground? [Mikhail] Gorbachev was an enormous free gift to Ronald Reagan. Evercore uses cookies to give you the best experience on our website. Yes, he did. I dont know how many people would have the political courage to do that, but I know I wouldnt have. 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. He has difficulty speaking. Once she was put in charge of it, it obviously had tremendous internal focus. You see a lot of candidates you know arent going to work that way. Well, it was also a surprise to many in the administration because the truth is, the fight over the economic plan took every ounce of energy that everyone had and attention didnt really turn to NAFTA until that was over, and that was over in August. So I wasnt sure what was going to happen, but there was no one in the field that was suddenly squashing everyone else including Clinton. So the question naturally arises, was it his economics? Before you get into that, can I ask you another question about the arrangements on the 1993 budget? So the question in part was: Are you going to really drive forward with an aggressive trade agenda for this administration or not? One is that it had a very rocky beginning in New Hampshire, and Im wondering if you have recollections about your reaction to the news events that occurred and to the electoral results in New Hampshire and how the President was able to deal with those things. Did you think it was a waste of time at that point? Bob Rubin was the ultimate financial market person, knew the role of the Federal Reserve so well. I remember that vividly the day of the convention, the morning the convention ended, or maybe the morning after it ended. So two points: one, I support what the President did and I think he deserves a lot of credit for it. But its interesting to put it into perspective. I began to see on pickup trucks around Charlottesville, very soon after Clinton became President, Impeach Bill Clinton and I dont thinkI remember Impeach Earl Warren signs, Im that old. Talking out of turn you mean? Any particular memories from that successful trip? I doubt that youll see that. Tweet. There were some cases where we did, but we didnt broadly know where each member of Congress really stood on this. Well, it can be revived at any time, the Congress can just vote to revive it. Until there had been hearings and so forth you dont get much of a sense of that. The election occurred and about a week later Reagan was getting a haircut in California and he came out of the barbershop. You had some experience with Japan before? I mean, the worst recession since the Great Depression occurred in 1981 and 1982 and in the fall of 82, in early August, Reagan was being described as Herbert Hoover, politically dead, gone, might as well already make his reservations back to Santa Barbara and so forth. 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. WebCornerstone Recovering Community (11001 South Wentworth Avenue) located at 11001 South Wentworth Avenue, Chicago, IL 60628, United States is a drug rehab facility Ive known many members. Clintons very first initiative was his stimulus program. So I knew we had a problem. I was very pleased that he decided not to run because I thought it would just mean the Democrats might well lose again. It was an astounding speech. 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. He was the head of the transition together with Vernon Jordan. Not surprising, given his state of origin. Whether you had disagreements with him or not, or felt warmly or less warmly toward him or not, he gave you the opportunity to do it, whether youre a Cabinet officer or anybody else. I started getting inundated with letters from Congress asking how the RTC intended to handle this, stirred up by this Republican campaign. It was a priceless education in the way the Congress and all the surrounding politics really worked. I think it counts for four, five percent of the spending. Can you tell us about that? But youd been doing transition work for a month. Id met him a few times, but not ever to speak to. Did you get the sense that this is true? 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. No, no. Bentsen managed himself with extraordinary skill. I did have the impression from the beginning that he was politically gifted and ambitious. Whats the question, why didnt Clinton embrace welfare ahead of healthcare? 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. He was a classic, in my book, excellent chief executive. Clinton of course had committed to that during the campaign and it made fiscal sense in the sense of there being so much economic slack. Now, of course, as far as working the Hill was concerned, I would take my cues from the constant and joint planning of the White House and Treasury legislative liaison staffs. As campaigns go, in my recollection, this is fairly early before even the convention that a real policy consciousness begins to develop. Well, Im not actually trying to establish whether these were particularly important in the campaign. You never saw it. But anyway, in retrospect it was a very bad idea. But I was to be sure, no matter what they asked me, guns? No. So I think it was quite smart to be done then. I was not one who thought the whole idea of putting the First Lady in charge of this was somehow unsound and I always had good relations with Mrs. Clinton, so we communicated pretty well. But also the role of the media had been changing a lot and that role I think manifested itself very vividly in the Clinton years. But then Senator [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan spoke to Kerrey late in the day and I thought that was, if not decisive, very influential. Ive seen Washington battles and that wasnt one of them. I had a certain background but it didnt include experiences like that. I do believe it was able to make a difference. For example, I said earlier, the National Economic Council is not a new idea at all, that the Ford administration had its version, Nixon had his version, and so forth. But absent such a crisis, history tends not to treat you as a great President. The President was all over this. Actually the bigger debate was over what came after NAFTA, welfare reform or healthcare. So, in August whatever it was the final vote was cast and the economic bill became lawwell, with the Presidents signature it became lawwe didnt really know what we were going to do on NAFTA. I want to come back to something that we had touched upon earlier, and that was this question about the administrations prioritizations, because you had suggested that there were some internal discussions, even at the time that NAFTA was taken on, as to what to do next. That was the fundamental choice they made in devising the reform. Thats just the way history works. TR, extraordinarily colorful President. I left the White House around April, took a couple of months off, and went back to New York. But anyway, he was quite a character. We might have a thousand independent counsels operating under the freedom of the press, investigations. That was on a Friday evening. Well, I dont think theyd like it. The Clinton years were not in any respect unique from that point of view, but that partisanship for some reason or other seems to go in cycles and we just happen to come into office at a time when the cycle was moving up in terms of the scale of partisanship. Do you have the perception that there were some other instances where maybe this wasnt done? Bentsen never lost an election, period, on which he was head of the ticket, ever. The independent counsel statute had, if my memory serves, expired during the Clinton first year, then was revived, and then was allowed again to expire. I then had the brilliant ideaIm saying this, obviously sarcastically, that I should inform the White House what those procedural alternatives were. Did you have a sense on the Japanese policy that we actually had a policy or that we had something that was in lieu of policy? Bentsen advised him to take it. Again, I knew nothing about the substantive investigation. This goes back to that question about the interim between the pain and the payoff. There is a President Clinton, Democrat, nominated a Republican to this job and the Democrats defeated his nomination. 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. We can go into that in a little more depth, the pure politics part of it. But in any event, there I was, and this guy, as I say, was a master of the game. I dont include that on the list because the federal role in education is always exaggerated. So no, Bentsen did not go over to the White House, hang around, talk about legislative strategy. I ran three times for student office while I was there. 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. For example, the Btu tax and the raising of the highest rate, highest bracket. Who the key players were and so forth. Yes, but the independent counsel is not a Clinton-era novelty. What was going on? That was a bad mistake. I also think it is wrong politically. Anyway, that was the high point, by far, of my own service, both in terms of the drama and the sense of having contributed something important. It was hard to make any progress at all because the Japanese really didnt want to agree to any of this. 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. The reason it didnt succeed a lot more than that is because its really macro factors that drive this. 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. He had tried to offer every imaginable olive branch to the Iranian leadership. In 1987, Mr. Altman joined The Blackstone Group as vice chairman, head of advisory business, and investment committee member. But I didnt have any knowledge of this stuff. I do have one question about the National Economic Council. But in any event, Im sure it wasnt as good as it should have been. It wasnt how he said it, it was what he said. Having said that, I dont believe that affected the partisan approach to it. It pains me to recognize that thats 35 years ago, but no, it wasnt the case. Bentsen had a lucidits hard to describe how lucid Bentsens observations always were. We met for six or seven hours in the Governors mansion there. 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. 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. Theyd review it and youd go to a meeting where you received a 900-page memo, three quarters of which you didnt understand. Then in the latter part of 93 I think, Whitewater began to surface, I think it was late 93. I think our administration tried, as hard as it was possible to try, to change the dynamic of the U.S.-Japanese trade relationship. Is he going to become President? I divided my time between the transition office and the Treasury. In some measure. Then, I was in Tokyo. So it was job one, so to speak. Was there a representative of the campaign. He did quite well. Hes pointing to the right-hand column of theWall Street Journal. 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. Andrew Garfield presented the Robert Altman Award at the 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards to his old friend, Fran Kranz, for his film Mass. Of course, any situation like that always has its humor. 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. I sat there for two or three hours and he took the measure of me and at the end he said, Would you like to do this? That was a wonderful comment. There was not a war going on. 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. I follow it pretty closely, and I have a hard time figuring it out. The two camps were right there sitting in front of the President for six hours at a time. Of course it was a very small kind of backwater type of situation, not a big one. 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. Youre an exception to this. If he predicted over the two years I worked for him, the fate of 25 pieces of legislation, he was right on all 25. Because the opponents had succeeded in changing the question, or framing the question, however you want to put it and that had taken hold in the country and the perception across the entire country, from North to South and so forth, was that this is nationalization of healthcare, which nobody in the United States favors. There had been a pre-election transition organization, and Im trying, Jim, to remember who headed up that operation. He didnt say so, but supposedly he never does. My role was also shaped by the fact that Bentsen picked his spots very carefully and not only didnt want to be involved in everything, only wanted to be involved in a very few things. 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. You say you knew Rubin well, but did you have a sense that in the other places where economic policy-making is made there was ever any tension over this kind of an arrangement? 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. 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. 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