The social aspect of it also involved here? More in terms of ostracism from your former colleagues. The only reason I think it worked was Bob Rubin, who had the skill and the temperament to make it work. Why? 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. But it was quite obvious that wed lost the battle. I guess I probably began to help raise money, its a rough memory now, in the early fall, perhaps September of 91. First of all, the Clinton White House wasnt really oriented to that. Who the key players were and so forth. But the main argument was economic. 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 politics of personal destruction as Mrs. Clinton is saying now on her book tour, common in American history, nothing new about it at all. From the very beginning I was spending a lot of my time on the Presidents economic program. Is this time for patriotism? But there sure was a lot of effort going into it. But there was the sense, based on conversationsI think you could go back and say that there were some discussions between Bentsen and Greenspan, Rubin and Greenspan, Clinton and Greenspan, although the sum total of those conversations probably took an hour. There was a camp around that view. Any meaningful change in the bill, particularly if were talking about the last month or two, was only done with the approval of the President. Thats a good point, but thats because there were some people whod been around the track. You say he didnt inspire fierce loyalty amongst a lot of his subordinates, but interestingly, I think a lot of the senior Cabinet members lasted a long time, I mean, they stayed for muchDonna Shalala was Secretary for eight years, Rubin was in for a long time, given the fact that his family didnt move to Washington. Until there had been hearings and so forth you dont get much of a sense of that. I doubt it. But by historians. That was the fundamental choice they made in devising the reform. I was on the board of the Childrens Television Workshop, now called the Sesame Workshop, the entity that produces Sesame Street and related childrens programming. In general, no. Had run successfully for Vice President. As a Democratic President however, he could have vetoed the bill and it would have been sustained by Congress. 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. No, there were 20-22 people there. Wasnt that a state-chartered institution? We talked for about 12 seconds about any role that I might play. Panetta had made a very distinguished career as House Budget Chairman out of pushing for lower deficits and a more transparent budget process. In 1987, Mr. Altman joined The Blackstone Group as vice chairman, head of advisory business, and investment committee member. They all came to the same conclusions. I didnt, no. Do you remember at what point this revised estimate comes in? Everything imaginable. So, as always happens, the policy apparatus was being built and the policy process was being deepened and becoming more sophisticated as the entire campaign evolved. Lets step back and just recall who the members of the senior economic team were because there was an entire team of people doing this. There could be a lot of backsliding on that, well have to see. 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. 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. I ran three times for student office while I was there. In 1991 it was not organized. And Bentsen did make the call. 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 turned out that the thing had really been left by the wayside and there was very little of the necessary planning that had gone into it and it was about two months off. Do you recall at what point you felt that there was some momentum being reestablished? The bills up on the Hill and it is the object of tremendous controversy and heat and light. The American political system has changed a lot. Well, after the Presidents unveiling and before the war room, this pre-war room effort at selling, how was that coordinated? We were both quite active in student government. I mean, I just thought he was such a hero. Dont ever talk down your currency; dont ever quarrel with the Federal Reserve Board. How were those dealt with, the decision to make a significant concession in the bill? 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. 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. Mr. Altman returned to Washington in 1993 to serve as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for two years. Not surprising, given his state of origin. I think that had to do with the actual signing of the treaty. I direct the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center. and the period of time during whichtheres a window during which it had to be submitted for a vote. 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? Abraham Lincoln saved the union. I attended Georgetown University and I was a year ahead of him. I dont know whether his Presidency will be seen as one of the most important or transformative in American history. It was absolutely breathtaking, profoundly dramatic and unforgettable, absolutely unforgettable. I recall taking maybe one or two trips with him outside New York, mostly just for my own enjoyment, to see what it was like. In part, there was a sectoral approach. 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. But I was briefed on the procedures the RTC had to follow here. 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. Mickey Kantor was in charge of the famous Little Rock Economic Summit. The entire gamut. So I watched the Senate vote, also on television, this time in the war room. 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. Were you involved in discussions at this point about what would be next in the queue for the administration, because there were some other. 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. Youre referring to the environmental and labor side issues. That was not clear to me. 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. I didnt devise them on my own. There was a whole bunch of work going on on that but I was completely preoccupied with the Presidents economic program and trying to get it passed, not just during the war room period but before that. I said I would and we went forward. 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. It occurred around 96, 97, but in the early stages of the Clinton years we didnt have a currency crisis. My comment is a retrospective comment. Was that equally true of the colleagues that you were making sales to with Clinton? When we had the opportunity to sit down, our own leadershipyou mentioned Leon Panetta, for example, having been chosenand formulate a fresh set of estimates based on all the then latest data, and obviously reaching out to a whole host of experts, it became clear that the deficit outlook was considerably worse than we thought. No. I think I called that evening. But of course Republican support was sought. When the voting began, we did not know if we were going to win. Those meetings were, at one level, rather riveting, but at another level they were disorganized. Healthcare got the nod. I believe Greenspan went to Little Rock. If youre Secretary of X, its pretty easy to become quite happily accustomed to the perquisites of that. Some people thought they were misguided. Its early 94 and the process on the healthcare initiative begins. Bentsen had known the then head of it, Albert Casey, whod been chairman of American Airlines, and didnt have a high regard for him. But from their vantage point, thats when they experienced intense partisanship. She herself has expressed regret over them. This had been the thrust of the campaign, so expectations were very high that Clinton would come forward with a real economic program, a comprehensive program, and from the moment that all these folks were chosen the question was, what is that program going to be? First of all, one has to put it into broad context, including that a number of the more established would-be candidates, if I can put it that way, chose not to run, led by Cuomo, but there were others. We didnt have a crisis in the foreign exchange markets. Yes. Secretary Bentsen took a lot of heat not long after being sworn in saying hed like to see a stronger yen, and that touched off a lot of controversy. Then in the latter part of 93 I think, Whitewater began to surface, I think it was late 93. So it was a quick learning experience for Clinton. So, to some extent, the President had put himself in a tough spot. No. That was before the convention. I can even imagine an independent counsel of some kind being unlikely, but not impossible, designated in the whole weapons of mass destruction issue. And that was fairly late, right, when Bowles came in? 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. This giant controversy erupted over that. 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