But that was fairly brief, though. Exactly. I dont think hes going to make it into the pantheon of heroes, as I said. The House voted first, and on the day of the House vote we didnt think we had the votes, or at least we thought the odds were too high that we would lose. 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. It was quite an experience, in retrospect. Did you do anything else? We had a chat; we had a nice time. But it was not a novel idea at all. 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? From the very beginning I was spending a lot of my time on the Presidents economic program. So there was a rather constant process of monitoring, assessing, adjusting, going on that way. Against that test, a noncrisis Presidency, what can they achieve, under the extremely adverse politics of this time, thats been building up. Thats why I wonder whether there was some kind of perception, outside. Its a strong field. 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. Well, Theodore Roosevelt is a fascinating President, mostly by dint of his gargantuan personality and the way that he bestrode the country like some titanic figure. 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. There may have been, but I know I didnt feel it. For one reason or other, Clinton developed some very powerful antagonists in the press, most notably Howell Raines of the New York Times editorial page, and the New York Times treatment of Clinton became a virtual industry unto itself. Luck plays a big role in politics, and he was really lucky that a number of candidates who could have been very strong ones chose not to run. Of course I would say were not proposing to take over the healthcare system. So I watched the Senate vote, also on television, this time in the war room. We just kept the pressure on the best we could. That was a factor. I knew Bentsen enough by reputation to know it was not by any means all set up, so to speak, by the time I went in there. I left the White House around April, took a couple of months off, and went back to New York. Because I think if you serve an administration, and you then decide to comment in some form or other, including in private, about the President and hes got these problems, or hes screwed up in this way, youre just lowering yourself. 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. They were cutting deals like there was no tomorrow. I raise the question because one of the outside perceptions that you get later on is when, in the early post-election period of the administration, theres some considerable debate within the administration about which of the priorities ought to come first, and among some of the people that you mentioned in Little Rock at the time. I put the President on the phone with her and of course, she cast the decisive vote. By that time, Clinton had his idea of the middle-class tax cut, and he had his idea of cutting the deficit in half during his first term, I think it was. Like everybody else, I thought he was finished when the Gennifer Flowers event emerged. Dont ever let those conversations be public. Clintons very first initiative was his stimulus program. If you think about who are almost universally considered the three or four greatest American Presidents, they all faced enormous crises, of course Lincoln, [George] Washington, FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] and so forth, and Clinton didnt. 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. Those would be the main points Id mention. But I dont think Ive ever witnessed, I can only call it a hate campaign, or feeling of hate I guesswhether its a campaign or not I dont knowbut this intense animosity to Bill Clinton and to Hillary Clinton. 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. Sure. The President relied on Bentsen and Altman to take on some of his Administrations toughest tasks. Bentsen said, Youre going to ask for this, and youre going to get this, meaning that. I mean, after all, Whitewater ultimately amounted to nothing. Yes, but the independent counsel is not a Clinton-era novelty. Can you tell us generally about your role during the general election campaign? But anyway, in retrospect it was a very bad idea. I remember that day. Was there a representative of the campaign. Might have been established by Washington. He predicted them. David Gergen was brought, which I think was probably the fall of 93 and Panetta replaced Mackthat was an awfully big event, of course. He demonstrated his phenomenal grasp of policy issues, just through sitting there for many hours a day. Pretty difficult to make major progress in that context. By the end of the year it had become a massive issue. Youve already mentioned the people who were attending that particular meeting. 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. He doesnt even know about the advent of optical scanners in grocery stores, and that was the theme, that was THE central theme as codified, so to speak, in [James] Carvilles famous comment, its the economy, stupid. I did the best I could. It traces to Clintons legendary wonkishness. Sure, because you always focused on the swing votes. The feelings of people along the wayside were just very endearing. He could have just been rhetorically difficult about it and kind of accepted the fact that were steady as she goes on the Cold War, and he didnt. A group of four of us were named at the same time: Bentsen, Rubin, [Leon] Panetta, and myself. Did the portfolio members that you were approaching on NAFTA change from the work you were doing. Okay, the election occurred and, for reasons Ive never fully understood, Alice Rivlin and I were the first two to go down to see Clinton, of those he was looking at for appointment purposes. If were talking about 1991, I think his ideas were in formation. Did it come out of Arkansas? And then, of course, the political people in the White House: George Stephanopoulos of course, and others in the White House. No because Clinton had determined, as he well should havesee, Presidents often dont do this, or Presidents-elect, but they shouldBentsen had to be satisfied that this was something he wanted. 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. Let me give you an example that is appropriate to the present. I sat next to Mrs. Clinton at dinner. Had it always been assumed that Rubin would take that position? No, its time for Russell, I really need this, I really need it, the country really needs it. Concessions involving individual members of Congress could often be done at a lower level, depending on the magnitude of the concession. I follow it pretty closely, and I have a hard time figuring it out. Exactly. I took an hour plus to do this. 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 Lloyd Bentsen was in that league, top five or six or seven. Anyway. The Times, which is typically, of course, a Democratic-leaning paper, was Clintons severest clinic throughout his whole Presidency, and on Whitewater went crazy. You had some experience with Japan before? You couldnt say to yourself, Well in the end hell be fine. We assembled Carter and Ford and George H. W. Bush, and various other luminaries, Jim Baker, [Henry] Kissinger and so forth, to project a bipartisan front on NAFTA and Clinton gave the speech of his life. 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? Bentsen had known the then head of it, Albert Casey, whod been chairman of American Airlines, and didnt have a high regard for him. I think Clinton was better served by virtue of Perots presence in the campaign than without it. Presidents should be presented with options that have been carefully developed, really carefully vetted, and those options should be written down in the usual way, and that wasnt the case here. Although the President really thought he could convince more Democrats of the merits of NAFTA than he ultimately did. 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. When did the President. Yes, because obviously I was seen as somebody who had business credentials to some degree, conservative credentials, by Democratic standards at least. So that went on with mounting intensity over a series of months after the President had actually laid it out. 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. When we took office and took a hard look at the deficit estimates, they were considerably worse than we had thought. In the first two years of the Clinton administration, they had about four Prime Ministers, pretty hard to get anywhere in that circumstance. I dont know whether his Presidency will be seen as one of the most important or transformative in American history. I should have said Larry Summers was an important part of that too. The Clinton stimulus plan just was not well conceived. Bentsen knew Clinton wouldnt get anything else if he didnt. 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. I can recall David Halberstam on the way out saying to me that he never heard a politician as effective as Clinton since JFK [John Fitzgerald Kennedy]. Bentsen tended to say very little at those meetings except at the end, when Clinton would turn to Bentsen and say, What would you do, Lloyd? Until there had been hearings and so forth you dont get much of a sense of that. Well, about ten minutes later President Clinton called me. We came up with a Btu [British thermal unit] tax. 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. I stayed down there for a day and a half, maybe 24 hours. Can you walk us through that? 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. Is this before the beginning of the year or. We might have a thousand independent counsels operating under the freedom of the press, investigations. So Ira was, to some degree, as youve read thousands of times, off in the corner doing this whole plan. Who was the New York group that helped him with fundraising and maybe also with policy? Erskine Bowles had to testify and so forth. Bob Rubin talked with great credibility about the bond market responding, and James Carville was so amusing for so long afterwards saying he wanted to come back in his next life and be the bond market because everybody paid such fealty to it. We knew each other, but we turned out to be the first two to go down and I dont know why that was. In all aspects? Bentsen, of course, didnt know the House as well as he knew the Senate, so it wasnt unusual that he himself wouldnt know in the House. Im Gary Burtless. It wasnt as simple as that, lay the groundwork for a new agreement. Did he interact comfortably with the other leaders at the summit? So it was job one, so to speak. I mean, there are libraries full of books that have already been written about that. Is the existence of a war room something. Im not quite sure what their input was. Or was it just that you were persuaded that he was going to be a great candidate? 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. Of course that depends on the moment in question. You havent told us about your own appointment. But I talked to Secretary Bentsen and I think hed been already talked to about it, but anyway, he said, Fine. That is foolish because history provides lessons on these matters. This was breaking news, CNN [Cable News Network] was interrupting its programming and so forth and President Clinton said, What is this about? Then about an hour before the vote, thats it, we knew that Kerrey would vote for us and then of course Gore could break the tie. Bob Rubin never uttered a single syllable except of friendship and support of President Clinton. Casey resigned and it was vacant. She figured in some bumper stickers also. Not too much, though. So two points: one, I support what the President did and I think he deserves a lot of credit for it. We had a good discussion and I went back to the airport and flew home. I guess I probably began to help raise money, its a rough memory now, in the early fall, perhaps September of 91. Bentsen never lost an election, period, on which he was head of the ticket, ever. Thats one of the things that kind of surprises. There were a lot of people who did take that candidacy very seriously though, right? I was completelyclean bill of health from the independent counsel. But I think one misunderstood aspect of his embracing NAFTA wasat that point he was being widely criticized for lacking in principle, lacking in conviction, a weathervane all over the place politically. As I remember the NAFTA campaign was kicked off only a month or two later. Im not sure thats true or it isnt. Youre an exception to this. 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. Some of the things on the wish list made a lot of sense, but some of them didnt. That ostracism certainly hasnt afflicted the Clinton alumni. But the two major currency accords, the Plaza Accord and the Louvre Accord, were done in times of crisis in the foreign exchange markets. I do believe it was able to make a difference. I went also for the election. It used to be, I believe, that they were graded on grounds of competent scholarship and so forth. And presided over eight years of peace. As everybody knows, ultimately there was not a single Republican vote cast for it, neither in the House nor the Senate. It was very stirring. 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. He managed himself beautifully and with great self-control, and Clinton had very little self-control. Everybody gets a nametag, and theres the Secretary of the Treasury, the Deputy Secretary of this and Director of OMB, and youre all sitting around, a very staged setting. In the Carter administration, there was no real sense of what the Federal Reserve really was, what it did, how to deal with it. Most of the people I mentioned, and Im sure Im forgetting a group of them, in fact, I know I am, but, I can recall getting slightly involved in debate preparationslightly now, not deeplyattending the debates, seeing drafts of speeches before he gave them, again, not all speeches, but certain speeches, that type of role. We began to have fundraisers toward the end of 91. Well, both is the answer. I suppose everyone has his own definition of intimate, but by any standard Im familiar with, I was not an intimate of Clintons. These cookies do not store any information that directly identifies you. Thomas Jefferson is under-appreciated as a President. Actually, each White House that I was familiar with had its own version of what we called the National Economic Council, and if you look back for example, during the Nixon and Ford administrations, they had something quite similar. I knew Bob Kerrey quite well by that time and Bob was very unpredictable. In addition, Mr. Altman is a director of New Visions for Public Schools and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. This is a bit of an anecdote, but of course Joel Klein served in the Clinton administration. He told me what was going to happen to the Clinton healthcare bill the day it was announced, actually before it was announced. That was before the convention. Of course he has those who get invited to his ranch and those who dont. So the experience of visiting these guys, some of whom were right on the edge, made tremendous impact on me. I ended up doing that over the space of four, five, six weeks. He lost that election. I think part of him saw an embrace of NAFTA as an opportunity to reestablish that he was a person of conviction, that he wasnt just in the pocket of the old traditional Democratic constituencies, wasnt just a tax-raiser and spender. So hes the one who asked you to serve in that position, not Clinton. There was a group of three or four of us who were doing Japan policy. I think the answer to your question was, Yes, it was, but the RTC was charged with the responsibility of cleaning up all S and Ls [Savings and Loans]. Well, it was just a strange evening. I dont know this, but I suspect that was decided largely between the President and Mrs. Clinton. You were in Tokyo when the President went over? The social side of it had almost nothing to do with it. It may have struck people on the outside as unusual, but not if youd been around. Finally the famous proposal comes forward and its put before the Congress. We had a chronic problem with Japan because they had so many Prime Ministers. 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. It was really quite revealing of Clintons inexperience to do it that way, and, for that matter his style, a poor way to do it. This is a transcript of the interview, which you may watch here. 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. How can you get more quantitative and specific than that? Whatever was going on on the deck of the Titanic was comparable, but it was absolutely frantic and incredibly dramatic and tense. But lets talk for a moment about the end of 1991. Its early 94 and the process on the healthcare initiative begins. Chrystia Freeland, Financial Times US managing editor, interviewed Roger Altman, co-CEO of Evercore Partners. Bentsen only talked to about five or six Senators. 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. Sure. Actually it was mundane. Altman donated $41,000 to the Biden Action Fund, a joint fundraising committee, in May, according to Federal Election Commission records. Yes. Thats a different issue. Be a great candidate 94 and the process on the healthcare system focused on outside! The deck of the Titanic was comparable, but I talked to about it, but I to! Happen to the Clinton stimulus plan just was not a single Republican vote cast for it, not... On some of whom were right on the Presidents economic program was able to it! 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