No admission fee, no contribution required. He told me what was going to happen to the Clinton healthcare bill the day it was announced, actually before it was announced. We came up with a Btu [British thermal unit] tax. But I didnt unilaterally choose all the members of it. He has his own views in private, of course. Everything is susceptible to being phased in, to being cut back, to being pilot-programmed. But really, not until the spring of 1991 when I began to hear rumblings that he was thinking of running. Can you tell us about that? Im convinced to this day that sent a bolt of electricity through the Iranians and they figured they better not hold those hostages one hour into Ronald Reagans Presidency, and they didnt. 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. 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. Then, while the agreement called for there to be no further duties or tariffs or anything on everything, a whole variety of items were carved out in order to get certain votes. Then, as the weeks and months went by, it came closer and closer and closer to whip counts. Were there different views? It begins I think with the economic and fiscal circumstances that the administration faced, and two in particular. I knew Paul Tsongas and he was a nice man, a good man, but he was not a good politician and I didnt see Paul Tsongas being the nominee. And, to some degree it was also, of course, for Clinton to take the measure of certain people he might be appointing. Was there anything that particularly distinguished this campaign from what youd seen in these other instances thats noteworthy? I might have a point of view about what those ought to be based on certain inputs I was receiving directly from the Hill and we need to work more on this or that. I had really not fully ever grasped from my Wall Street days, that there was a great big regulatory side to it including enforcement side, where the RTC was also charged with pursuing investigations against former thrift officials and ultimately prosecuting them if circumstances warranted. I thought Perot was a flake, I think Perot is a flake, so I didnt take him terribly seriously. So this is the case where basically hes saying, My Presidency and this party are going to rise or fall based on whether we succeed in this or not. 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. We founded Evercore in 1995, on the premise that clients would be best served by an investment banking firm free of the conflicts of interest inherent to large, multi-product financial institutions. Very, I think, untoward behavior, myself. I know this will sound quite strange, but Clinton was in some awe of Bentsen and a little bit of fear of Bentsen. Like everybody else, I thought he was finished when the Gennifer Flowers event emerged. I think Clinton authentically saw healthcare as more important, believed it was a bigger national problem, and thought he was tackling the bigger of the two. Well, how do you know? When you were suggesting Edmund Morris I was thinking. 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. There were quite a few members where I had lead day-to-day responsibility. In the spring of 1991, I think it would have been May or June, we had the chance to have a talk here in New York, and I then talked to him by phone. Then Clinton, as I mentioned, this one big event in January of 92Clinton was great on his feet. I had a certain background but it didnt include experiences like that. Then it went down to defeat. 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. Panetta had made a very distinguished career as House Budget Chairman out of pushing for lower deficits and a more transparent budget process. Because they thought, If we hold those hostages very long at all after this man becomes President, we may be nuclearized. That by choosing Panetta, and Bentsen, and Rubin, he chose economic conservatives. Actually it was mundane. I hadnt been parachuted in from some distant spot without any such relations. I spent the last couple of hours of that period in the Oval Office with the President and that was quite unforgettable too because the President was hugely animated, to some extent discouraged, to some extent angry, and there were moments when I was the only one in there with him. Casey came to see Bentsen and essentially asked to be reappointed and Bentsen told him, No. A group of four of us were named at the same time: Bentsen, Rubin, [Leon] Panetta, and myself. You can do it through tax increases and then you have to choose the tax, and you can do it through spending reductions and you have to choose the area youre going to focus on. 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. The White House decidedwell, there were certain people who were obviously going to be in it. I worked very closely with Bob Kerrey, with Senator [Max] Baucus, who had such a problem with the gas tax. 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. It wasnt any of those. Well, it was supposed to become the law of North America on January 1st, wasnt it? How difficult was it to raise money in the environment, Cuomo aside, just for somebody who had been a Governor of Arkansas in a campaign season when theres. I certainly have every reason to want him to. I was the natural person to do that, having served in it before. A lot of people didnt realize and I didnt entirely realize the regulatory responsibilities of the RTC at the time. Did you go to Little Rock for the election? By the way, in any matter where the statute of limitations was about to expire, there was nothing specific about the Madison matter that was any different. No. There was quite a discussion that day about long-term interest rates, as I said the credit markets rather than the Fed. So my average day was spent a few blocks from here, working full-tilt on the business responsibilities I had. Who was the coordinator, if any, in the first follow up? The ultimate plan was way too complicated for the Congress and the country to grasp and understand and soberly assess. He is a trustee of MIT and serves on its Governance Committee. I want to ask you, was that a note that had been sounded with some emphasis as early as these very early meetings that you were talking about in 91? If were talking about 1991, I think his ideas were in formation. People have made that mistake and theyve suffered from it. But I was to be sure, no matter what they asked me, guns? I was just in awe of people like that. Not the first time he met with another head of state, but I think his first summit outside this country. Tickets to the Kennedy Center and things of that nature, or is this too big a matter. Oh sure, sure, well have another major Presidential uproar. If you think about it, it makes lots of sense. During the transition period the question was, Who are we going to nominate the head the RTC? But in any event, there I was, and this guy, as I say, was a master of the game. Did it come out of Arkansas? I cant remember allTom Brokaw was there, Davis Weinstock, Dick Beatty, Bob Rubin, George Katz, and/or Bernie Nussbaum were there. I respected him, but I never identified with him and I didnt see him being a successful Democratic nominee. I started doing a lot of the same thing Id done on the economic plan: radio shows, television stuff, running around the country. 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. Bentsen had told me from the first moment this thing was going nowhere. So the Carter White House was a bit at seavisvis the Federal Reserve and its role, how to relate to it. So I watched the Senate vote, also on television, this time in the war room. If Im not mistaken, Paul Tsongas won New Hampshire? 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 there was a lot of humor like that. Thomas Jefferson is under-appreciated as a President. That was just an amazing experience. We were very explicit. Earlier in Little Rock, was she in attendance at any of these meetings? You wouldnt choose to go before a grand jury instead of, say, going to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees playAt that point I was already out of the administration and I had no real concerns. I think it did. Altman ran the White House war room during last 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. I wasnt directly negotiating them. Its not as easy. Georgetown was the equivalent of a placid, slow-moving river and Chicago was the equivalent of a roaring torrent. I didnt think it was going to be that bad. So the traditional Democratic field has had in it a few candidates who represent that. Before you get into that, can I ask you another question about the arrangements on the 1993 budget? That was great. I had the benefit of having the office next to Lloyd Bentsen, and maybe there are some people around, even in American history, that have had a better grasp of the American Congress than Lloyd Bentsen, but I never met one. [Mikhail] Gorbachev was an enormous free gift to Ronald Reagan. It wasnt difficult. WebNot only are 10% of the U.S. House and Senate Jesuit-trained from Georgetown, but so are many of the world's political leaders, which should have you asking What are they really up to?" Carter had his famous Pond House meetings, and I went to a couple of those. He told me what would happen to the Clinton stimulus bill the day it was put forward. Well, there was, like most administrations, kind of a running shakeup. Im not sure. 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? It was not as big a change as it was advertised to be, or has been seen historically. We were all trotted out in Little Rock on the same day. I think the critical revelation that day was the notioninitially I believe put forth by Allen Blinder, that a certain amount of deficit reduction ought to translate into a certain level of interest rate response, which in turn should be more stimulativeshould inject more stimulus into the economy than anything that we could do on the fiscal side. There was no real reason for that, it was just fate, happenstance, just the case that not many of them did. The two camps were right there sitting in front of the President for six hours at a time. I never heard of them. 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. I knew a lot about Perot, having been heavily involved in Wall Street for many years. 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 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? There were certain others, I cant recall now, but a group of six or eight or nine, and we literally sat around with pieces of paper and drafts and hammered it out. But was it a battle? Were there discussions in these early stages about the President being mismanaged, or was there a sense that this was somebody who couldnt manage himself? It should have, but it hasnt. He was very disciplined and he went to bed at a certain time and he went home. Certainly on free trade you would say that there was a consistency in his rhetoric during the campaign and the behavior of the administration after he was elected. For example, out of that Tokyo summit, bilateral summit, Clinton, [Kiichi] Miyazawa, or whoever the Prime Minister was at the moment, came a commitment from the Japanese to lower their current account deficit from what I think was 2.5 percent of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] to less than 2 percent. We might have a thousand independent counsels operating under the freedom of the press, investigations. But from their vantage point, thats when they experienced intense partisanship. Healthcare got the nod. Obviously Sam Rayburn. 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. 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. Altman donated $41,000 to the Biden Action Fund, a joint fundraising committee, in May, according to Federal Election Commission records. So it could be revived again tomorrow. I didnt feel it because I had a long relationship with Bob Rubin, which had been ten or 12 or 14 years, and Bentsen and Rubin had had their own long relationship and I saw no real problem with everybody relating successfully to each other. That was a factor. You referred earlier to the cycles of political partisanship, policy issues. Is he somebody who, from your perception, makes close friends at all? There are too many people in his own administration, at least at the moment, who think that all he finally did was succumb to the Republican position, and anybody who wore a D on his shirt and supported the Republican position could have brought along enough Ds to make the bill happen. Yes, and also there was considerable uncertainty as to whether Cuomo was indeed a candidate, which, as we all know, he proved not to be. At this point youre working on policy questions primarily? I can remember feeling very chastened because he talked about how many children we were helping and how many families we were helping and I chose to try to makejust in the spirit of celebration, a few jokes. Secretary Bentsen was too important and had other things to do than to go down to Waco, Texas, and try to figure out what was going on there. Some people thought they were misguided. One was in connection with Putting People First, when we had the wonderful experience of taking a cab from the Little Rock airport and having the cab driver slow down and practically come to a stop for a second, and excitedly point out to us Gennifer Flowers apartment building. Its the biggest story in Washington, Hillary Clinton, the whole thing. Do you have any recollections of seeing anything different in him as a candidate at that point for that position? A little bit. 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. 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. Mike Blumenthal, the first Secretary of the Treasury, knew, but he didnt have a close relationship with Carter. So Ira was, to some degree, as youve read thousands of times, off in the corner doing this whole plan. That raises the question then of the people he was meeting with here. I did have the impression from the beginning that he was politically gifted and ambitious. I think thats a wonderful tradition. [laughter]. One of the initial ideas was an energy tax. So there was not a war of the type that has so often been written about, just not true. 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. Yes. 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. I ran three times for student office while I was there. When you say the coordinator, you mean of the Presidents message? A lot of people wanted to work on Capitol Hill or think tanks or with interest groups. Casey resigned and it was vacant. Arthur Burns was the chairman of the Fed. Its really quite stunning. 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. The feelings of people along the wayside were just very endearing. From that time forward, about 79 times out of 80 Clinton did whatever Bentsen said. I mean just the vote itself and the fact that not a single Republican voted for this, which even by its critics is seen now as having been at least a contributor to the economic prosperity and fiscal balance that later resulted. 1991 when I began to hear rumblings that he was politically gifted and ambitious we going to be,... 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