He said, I know this will be hard, but I think I can get those folks. In fact, Bernard and his late partner, George Katz, were both involved. There had been some minor event that day and he was asked what he thought of the latest developments in Iran and he said, I dont talk about barbarians. There were ten or twelve or fourteen or fifteen, big numbers. Im in the first camp, it was a great triumph, but Im not sure that history will accord him that. [laughter]. I know Bentsen, especially in retrospect I know Bentsen. By the end of the year it had become a massive issue. Because Clinton very shrewdly realized the respective strengths of Bentsen and Rubin and put each in the right job. You may not have been conscious of it. He didnt like Clintons stimulus program. Web(Studio: Charles Gibson) Earlier interview held with Evercore Partners Roger Altman about the House vote and the market reaction. 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. I want to ask you a general question since youve raised the Carter precedent again here.And that is, we get the perception in talking with some people that there was a conscious effort on the part of senior-most advisors to President Clinton not to reach out and rely on a lot of people that had Carter-era experience in the Presidency. 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. It wasnt going to be a war between the United States and the Soviet Union. You were in Tokyo when the President went over? And the field against which Clinton ultimately competed was not a strong field. Gene Sperling was in it. You were both involved then in student government. Some time around 1989 or so, Hillary Clinton went on the board. So is there a lot of policy difference today between the nine candidates running for the Democratic nomination in June 2003? Was that equally true of the colleagues that you were making sales to with Clinton? We cant afford to lose it, that type of stuff. I mean, there are libraries full of books that have already been written about that. We had so much going on that Bentsen asked me if I would just, on an interim basis, serve as interim chairman of the RTC. Within a month, I remember vividly one day, I had seven radio shows. 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. That was just how all Presidents should act. They were done among the United States, Mexico, and the Congressional parties involved. 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. I cant remember allTom Brokaw was there, Davis Weinstock, Dick Beatty, Bob Rubin, George Katz, and/or Bernie Nussbaum were there. Thats a different issue. Actually I delivered mine to great jocular reaction, but then Gene Sperling stood up and he talked about the ten reasons why this was a good bill. TR, extraordinarily colorful President. I didnt say anything to that. I divided my time between the transition office and the Treasury. We had had recent experience in which the President of the United States took very strong actions against the Japanese, with these agreed-upon quotas for U.S. exports, exports in autos to the U.S., I dont quite remember how longThat was negotiated certainly over the wishes of the Japanese but less than ten years. Can you walk us through that? Of course that depends on the moment in question. That they felt that people who had served the President. But its there on the record; everybody can read those reports. Mrs. Bentsen responded. Born on April 2, 1946 in United States of America, Roger Altman started his career as Financial professional . WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday interviewed investment banker Roger Altman, a former Treasury official, as a candidate to replace 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. Clinton, as I mentioned before, held a series of marathon meetings, I recall that virtually all of them were on the Roosevelt Room, and they went on for four, five, six, seven hours, talking about possible elements of the economic program. And deficit reduction was his top priority, a focus at the top? You see people scrambling to monopolize the left. I dont think I would have known otherwise. The assessment was correct because, I cant recall the size of the economy then, but today it is about $10.7 trillion. Even at the end of 91 it was small and relatively unformed. So two points: one, I support what the President did and I think he deserves a lot of credit for it. For example, during the Lewinsky matter, the airways were filled with former Clinton officials expounding their views of President Clintons foibles and why he might have done this and this and that. In addition, Mr. Altman is a director of New Visions for Public Schools and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. The media to some degree has shifted for, in my view, simple generational reasons, to the right, and the right-of-center media is much more monolithic than the rest of the media, and so its ability to concentrate its opposition and its influence emerged as much greater during the Clinton years. The great Presidents that you mentioned, the ones that loom large, as you said, are all crisis Presidents. He should have taken it. So there were four, Fiske and the other three, and they all came to the same conclusion, and the latter three also addressed the question of whether any of the government ethical guidelines had been violated and they all concluded no, they hadnt been. Richard Nixon resigned from office. I sat next to Mrs. Clinton at dinner. You had been given a portfolio before that time? Sure, Greenspan was in favor of deficit reduction, so when the administration came forward with an actual deficit reduction plan, which, as we all know, was a bit unexpected, Greenspan supported it, testified for it and so forth. Maybe we ought to move to the actual setting up of these priorities and the choices made and that process, from post-election into the actual post-inauguration time. The American political system has changed a lot. Oh yes, sure. But its not too different from Clintons style, very personal, very, very personal. So there was a lot of humor like 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. No, he was working the Hill like everyone else, but he was important. So no, Bentsen did not go over to the White House, hang around, talk about legislative strategy. The arrangements, as far as the White House, how it passes operation, and the Treasury operationshould that be seen as well coordinated, or is it difficult to coordinate? Abraham Lincoln saved the union. So it became effectively a simultaneous multilateral and bilateral summit because it became the setting for Clintons direct discussions with the Japanese Prime Minister. The Clinton stimulus plan just was not well conceived. I dont think thats a very good answer to your question, but I dont think I have a better one. Dont ever talk down your currency; dont ever quarrel with the Federal Reserve Board. I personally thought Rubin was most likely to be Secretary of the Treasury. 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. 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. 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? Ill never forget, it was just a few days after the election and Carter, of course, had been beset by the Iranian hostage crisis and the failure of Desert One and so forth, the rescue effort. Web446 Roger Altman Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO All Sports Entertainment News Archival Browse 446 roger altman Here we are in June 2003 and the election as we all know is November 04, so its 16 months or so It was after all largely negotiated by his predecessors, and yet he took a big gamble on that one, too, and thats sort of a kick in the midsection to a lot of his Democratic supporters. The only reason I think it worked was Bob Rubin, who had the skill and the temperament to make it work. Were there Republican members that he particularly relied on. Clinton chose in Bentsen, with the possible exception of [Robert] Dole, who obviously wasnt a candidate for this, the most experienced person in the entire United States Congress. No, I did not. Did you have a lot of organizational responsibilities, or it was a going concern when you. No, I went back the next day. Carter had his famous Pond House meetings, and I went to a couple of those. But he did give a big speech about healthcare before NAFTA came to a vote, right, as I recall? I dont know about developing the convention. [laughter]. So I was going down to Waco, Texas. I didnt have a background in healthcare of any kind, and I began to see that it was overloading the circuits to try to do as much as some wanted to. To make a long story short, of course we all hired lawyers and so forth and we were brought before a grand jury. You recently saw Secretary John Snow in a very studied fashion talk about, make an effort to ease the dollar down, we saw that on two different occasions, and I know how these things work. Im not quite sure what their input was. and Lloyd would say, I wouldnt do it, Mr. President, or I would do it. Bentsen was chosen during the first week of December. Yes, but the independent counsel is not a Clinton-era novelty. So the traditional Democratic field has had in it a few candidates who represent that. That was pretty damn effective. I view that as a very unfortunate decision the Democrats made, but that was a new low, or a new high, however you look at it, in partisanship. But the key revelation was the most stimulative thing we could do for this economy is to induce a monetary response. I made two trips to Little Rock. Would I have considered moving to Switzerland if he did become President? But my guess is that those kinds of. Rob Rubin and I went together, Bob Reich was there, Gene Sperling was there, Bob Shapiro was there. That ostracism certainly hasnt afflicted the Clinton alumni. The entire gamut. Sure, because you always focused on the swing votes. But it was a rather fluid, floating group. Of course it was a very small kind of backwater type of situation, not a big one. I should be very careful here. 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. I taught at Georgetown for a little while, and the distinguishing features of the students that I would have had ten or twelve years ago were that they had a high degree of interest in national and international politics. We had lunch. I recall speaking about 20 minutes before the vote to Marjorie MargoliesMezvinsky,with whom I had developed a friendship, and it became evident to me that she was very reluctant but willing to vote for the bill. If Whitewater occurred today or there was some like set of issues surrounding President Bush and his past, I dont think thered be a single hearing about it. There are many people in the administration who dont like the welfare reform that was ultimately signed, believed that Clinton ultimately turned centrist on the issue and anybody could have done that and once you did it as a Democratic President, you were going to have welfare reform. It wasnt between the political people and the policy people, it was among the policy people and involving some of the political people. Its mostly things I learned that dont work. Finally the famous proposal comes forward and its put before the Congress. But thats the type of thing the Deputy Secretary sometimes does, or when there are problems with the IRS. Once again, were grateful for your time. 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. It pains me to recognize that thats 35 years ago, but no, it wasnt the case. Weve all seen this happen often in Washington. Bill Clinton, by that one- or two-line standing, may not make the cut for the top tier. You get there and then you figure out what your actual sequence of initiatives is going to be. And it was just fuel on the already roaring fire of Whitewater. What really happened was that the stimulus was entirely spending-side stimulus. I wasnt sitting all by myself with him, but sure, there were various opportunities to be in relatively small groups with him. Were you at all involved in the development of the side agreements on environmental issues and. Bentsen could tell you, within 4 percent accuracy, what was going to happen to every one of these bills. Many people consider him, many of his opponents considered him to be setting new heights of insincerity and to have misrepresented a lot of his past. She inspired, continues to inspire, fierce loyalty and he doesnt. They were using very powerful weaponsI think .20 caliber weapons. You said earlier you were involved raising some money, but also providing some advice and guidance on economic policy. I recall, for example, a discussion at that very original dinner in the spring of 1991 and a rather focused discussion on economic policy, and particularly about deficit reduction. So heres a person who knew how to manage himself. I was just going to make an observation about history, historians and non-historians who study Presidents past and present. Not surprising, given his state of origin. Anyone who does that indeed does not know what he is doing, and its the equivalent of Economic Policy 101. Well, it was just a strange evening. So my average day was spent a few blocks from here, working full-tilt on the business responsibilities I had. There were some folks from the White House Press Secretarys office who were in it. 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? Were you involved in that effort? Did Bentsen then become sort of a one-man legislative strategy group? The Office of Government Ethics came to its conclusion and the Treasury Inspector General as you know is an independent party and came to the same conclusions, the White House counsel came to the same conclusion. There were some cases where we did, but we didnt broadly know where each member of Congress really stood on this. The New York Times put it on the front page and this giant controversy erupted. They just didnt believe it would work. He is the only person who has declined because of heath reasons and we wont have the opportunity to talk with him. Im not joking. You could have something like the Paris agreement in 1985 when there was coordinated strengthening of the European and Japanese currencies and weakening of the dollar. So he chose someone who not only had a great reputation and tremendous stature, but who could particularly help him with Congress, and it was a shrewd choice. I just remember that being contemporaneous with the real beginning of an organized effort here. which was a separate agency and Presidential appointment. And we had the same in the Carter administration, but it had been more junior. 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