Oh sure. Yes. As everybody knows, ultimately there was not a single Republican vote cast for it, neither in the House nor the Senate. Was there anything that particularly distinguished this campaign from what youd seen in these other instances thats noteworthy? We can come back and pick up on each of these strains and try to get you to flesh out the skeleton if we can. We recommend you to check the complete We didnt have a crisis in the foreign exchange markets. You would have thought Senator Bentsen would have felt that way also, unless there was an assumption that this was literally going to be a few weeks time. So Ira was, to some degree, as youve read thousands of times, off in the corner doing this whole plan. So I felt very chastened by what Gene had said. I believe Perots presence helped Clinton because Perot kept saying how messed up the country was, so that actually helped the challenger rather than the incumbent. But I was briefed on the procedures the RTC had to follow here. Before we close, Id like to make one pitch though. It just depended on the size of the concession. I have to tell my most famous Bentsen story because it really illustrates what an extraordinary person Bentsen was. 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. Those carve-outs were all done on a tripartite basis. Or Ill put it another waywe didnt know where the President was on NAFTA on that day. Bentsen managed himself with extraordinary skill. It was the best political speech, with a couple of exceptions, Id ever heard, which prompted a wonderful comment from former President Bush, who then came to the microphone and said, Now I know why Im on the outside looking in. So the question naturally arises, was it his economics? No, he doesnt, not in terms of the way I would define close friends, genuine friends. Of course, I met with the senior ATF guys. 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. No, I went back the next day. Why a war room? I was not involved in the decision as to the sequencing of healthcare versus welfare reform. Roger C. Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, which has become the most active independent investment bank in the world. I think. Are you including in this the difference of approach between the campaign-oriented, the political people, and the policy people, as well as the differences among. 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. It became obvious to me that it was just untenable to keep trying to shout into this hurricane. I think Clinton recognized that, by virtue of his being an outsider in Washingtonhe never served in Washingtonhe needed a link to the Congress, a really superb link, of the type that Bentsen afforded, especially since Clintons first priorities were economics.The Senate Finance Committee was going to be, more than any other single place, where the action was. Decided to do this. I liked him and we had a certain history together, and I was strongly of the view that it was time to get the Republican Party out of the White House after 12 years. Theres a time lag between taking painful steps to do something with the deficit and getting some response in the. The war room was very effective for Clinton, and of course, it was to some degree patterned after the war room in the campaign, which was then the object of an interesting film among other things. Of course, the fact of a summit means you have to have some agreement, and we had an agreement. This is just a tradition, The answer is, in my viewthis is just my recollection now, other people would have a different onewas economics first, foreign policy second. So monetary policy has gone from being considerably more powerful than fiscal policy in 93, to being the only policy in town in 2003. You had some experience with Japan before? There were a lot of people who did take that candidacy very seriously though, right? He had tried to offer every imaginable olive branch to the Iranian leadership. I remember that vividly the day of the convention, the morning the convention ended, or maybe the morning after it ended. 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. But unfortunately the real show was about to begin, which I didnt realize, which was the Congressional hearings. So he got people to serve for a long time, even if they were not intensely loyal to him. Its interesting too at this very moment with her book having just come out to watch some of the tapes being played on television about some of her own moments. What political or personal characteristics does she have that he doesnt have, what does she bring to the. Founder and Senior Chairman | 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]. Yes, hes just that way. I worked very closely with Bob Kerrey, with Senator [Max] Baucus, who had such a problem with the gas tax. Id have to do a little homework. He and Kerrey had a very close relationship. I think history will probably record that as the most important achievement of President Clintons overall Presidency, not the vote itself of course, but the ultimate effects of it. He loved policy. 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 think his views at that point were in formation. 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. 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. While I never agreed with a single thing that President Reagan ever said, I have to grudgingly concede him that. Bentsen never lost an election, period, on which he was head of the ticket, ever. He was very impressive. President Clinton gave you the opportunity to serve your country, its a privilege to serve your country. I was onboard before then, but at the end of 1991 it would have been Bob Rubin, Ken Brody, me, Stan Shuman. Its mostly things I learned that dont work. I think I called that evening. 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. 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. Hes chancellor of the Board of Education of New York, hes a good friend of mine, and I had dinner with him about a month ago and I said, Does it make any difference who the President is as far as youre concerned? So it became effectively a simultaneous multilateral and bilateral summit because it became the setting for Clintons direct discussions with the Japanese Prime Minister. But, in any event, there was some sense that if we would tighten fiscal policy, there was the opportunity to loosen monetary policy. Its quite a difference and I ascribe it to the fact that she does not look at the world as, or at least in my experience, as solely and only politically. What specifically arose was that the statute of limitations on any prosecution involving the failure of an S and L was about to expire. Casey resigned and it was vacant. Well, I dont think theyd like it. You think that a lot of Republicans who didnt support it would say, Well, theres a little justice in the world because Bush 41 paid the price for having a compromise in 1990 that, along the lines of the 1993 bill, did help restore some fiscal discipline to the U.S. 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 There ensued a quite Byzantine process, as has been so widely written about with multiple task forces and enormous numbers of people involved.There were a lot of these Bill Clinton-style meetings, great big long meetings with far too many people in the room. I take these observations, very astute observations, from people who live in this discipline. The election took place on the first Tuesday of November. Who the key players were and so forth. The administration made a change in the way economic policy-making was going to be made too, and I think that choice was made during the transition to have a National Economic Council, and that would have been a great unknown given the Treasurys historical role in economic policy-making. 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. The meetings became sort of a phenomenon and some people thought they were great because they were so inclusive and here we were having opportunities to spend hours with the President. Who was the New York group that helped him with fundraising and maybe also with policy? No voters will cast their votes, even two years from now, even in 94, one year from now, on the basis of my having voted against it. 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. For example, much has been made of the dueling camps, the deficit hawks versus the populists. I was the class of 1967 and he was the class of 1968. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday interviewed investment banker Roger Altman, a former Treasury official, as a candidate to replace 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. 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. He lost that election. 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