They just didnt do it. 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. I remembered him of course, but I dont think he knew me. Were they talking about what you do with Senator X, with Congressman Y? Now I did not attend that, but the issue of the Presidents economic plan and whatever adjustments were going to be made and the efforts to push it forward were discussed, perhaps in most cases the number one item, at the senior staff meeting each day. Once again, were grateful for your time. There may have been, but I know I didnt feel it. There were people like Senator [Phil] Gramm saying it would usher in a new depression. Well, that was just one of the many fatal diseases that this bill had. I went also for the election. I would say presided over, Id have to check the statistics, but probably the greatest period of economic prosperity in the entire century, or ushered in the greatest period of prosperity in the entire century. But I only began to spend heavy time on that after the August passage of the Presidents economic program. And then, of course, the political people in the White House: George Stephanopoulos of course, and others in the White House. I think it was serious as a political thing, meaning you had three candidates instead of two and of course, the dynamic was different. 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. NAFTA has been successful. I dont think this is what it really says, but I suppose in the distant lens of history, Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War. I ran for president of the student body in the spring of my junior year, and he did the same in the spring of his junior year, which was one year following mine. So not long after arriving in the new offices, which were over there on Vermont Avenue, I remember that, I went over to the Treasury and met with Secretary [Nicholas] Brady and the Deputy Secretary, very nice manname escapes me at the momentand began to debrief the senior members of the department. Some of the things on the wish list made a lot of sense, but some of them didnt. But an awful lot of people love being Cabinet officers and leave only most reluctantly. Those would be the main points Id mention. The only thing that Id like to leave this on in respect to any follow-up is this: If at any point you dont think you have a clear picture of Lloyd Bentsens role, since he is not in a position to speak for himself, feel free to call me or talk to me further about that. Can you talk about Perots influence on the campaign? Clinton had his own style of charm and Bush has a little bit different style, but not very different. Georgetown was not a hotbed of political activism. Were there follow-up meetings with Japan that you were involved in after the summit? He should have taken it. Altman ran the White House war room during last and the period of time during whichtheres a window during which it had to be submitted for a vote. And there were obviously a whole host of people who were against it from day one and you werent going to change anybodys mind in the latter category. 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. I was involved in the Carter campaign in 1976 and the Mondale campaign in 84, [Michael] Dukakis in 88, Clinton, now Im involved again this time, and, knowing that, I never met anyone who had the appetite for policy itself that Clinton did. And I dont have any different set of reactions than anyone else watching the thing at the time. I thought Perot was a flake, I think Perot is a flake, so I didnt take him terribly seriously. The reason I posed the question the way I did is that since World War II theres been bipartisanship in Presidential leadership on free trade. Were there things about those campaigns that you had learned in preparation for this one that proved to be particularly helpful? But the politics of the Btu tax, as compared to other types of energy taxes, were not well considered. He moved it to the center, made it the party of fiscal responsibilitywhoever would have believed that?and enabled the party to shed much of its old baggage. I just know from prior experience that thats the way to do it. 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. They just didnt come to the Secretary, to the Chairman of the RTC, no more than investigations being pursued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, or the Secret Service or what have you come to the Secretary of the Treasury. As has been, as I said, so widely chronicled, the focus was on the economy because the economy was sluggish, in a recessionary state. No, two funny stories, Jim, dont let him off so easily. Well, it was just a strange evening. Yes, actually there was a big debate about healthcare, welfare reform, and NAFTA. Its the biggest story in Washington, Hillary Clinton, the whole thing. Im an economist in the Brookings Institution in Washington. Is the existence of a war room something. The Republicans quite shrewdly picked out some that didnt make sense and off the bat marshaled a very focused attack on it. 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. They werent really involved in the doing of the plan. Nobody said to me, Hes there. But yes, we had meetings in his hotel room at three in the morning. Clinton had in fact been working on Capitol Hill during this time and I guess I was just trying to get a sense about whether that was unusual. My comment is a retrospective comment. But, no, they couldnt have been more cooperative. Primarily I had learned what doesnt work, and I had learned a couple of thingsyou can tell, I think, when youre exposed to a candidate enough times, whether hes going to work out there as a retail politician, as they say, an outdoor politician, and when he isnt. I want to be sure that there is a clear picture of that because he cant offer it himself. The entire economic team flew on a chartered plane down to Little Rock. TR, extraordinarily colorful President. Did you think that they took those claims seriously, or was this pure politics? I had a certain background but it didnt include experiences like that. Of course that depends on the moment in question. Doing concerted, multilateral action of the type youre referring to is really only appropriate in the midst of a crisis. You didnt have to spend much time around them to see this. But absent such a crisis, history tends not to treat you as a great President. Had run successfully for Vice President. Bentsen was just a legend and Clinton had never served in Washington and Lloyd Bentsen was a king of Washington. Had it always been assumed that Rubin would take that position? Just promotes disunity and so forth. No admission fee, no contribution required. But it really was quite effective because one needed a military-like approach with only five or six weeks to go, and that bill was in trouble. It wasnt trade; trade was not a big issue in the campaign. They had a very unsuccessful discussion, which resulted in name calling and cursing. Yes, and Im sure that any number of opponents to the Presidents plan were sincere in their expectation that it wouldnt work. But it was not a novel idea at all. Sometimes without him and sometimes with him, but if Mrs. Clinton was there, everybody else was. NAFTA had much broader support among the so-called or self-styled elites, the business leadership, all the economics community, the foreign policy establishment. Not likely, and was not the case in 92. But also the role of the media had been changing a lot and that role I think manifested itself very vividly in the Clinton years. We cant afford to lose it, that type of stuff. In other words, all the work that goes in before its actually sent to the Hill. Each day hed give a speech and mark off a day, counting down the days to the expiration of the statute of limitations and saying these people at the RTC damn well better be sure that justice is served, the Clintons arent off the hook. And I dont accept entirely your formulation, even though I think theres a lot to it. 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. In the last 48 or 72 hours, because that vote was also a cliffhanger, although not as close. Of course, during earlier phase of this, Bernie Nussbaum had resigned, mostly over the fact that he met with me on this original matter. I was not involved in the decision as to the sequencing of healthcare versus welfare reform. 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. He must have wondered what he was doing. And the difficulty became quickly evident once the program was laid out. But he was at least alive. Roger C. Altman. So Mack played relatively little role in this. Could you see at that point a set of priorities emerging with the candidate? But I was briefed on the procedures the RTC had to follow here. I did not have a crystal ball to the effect that he was going to make it and that the dominos were somehow going to fall in a certain way that enabled him to do so. So the question naturally arises, was it his economics? How do you think Clinton ultimately is going to be read by historians, this Presidency? 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? I think each person makes his or her own decision. Its fashionable for conservatives to say that the recovery had already begun on George H. W. Bushs watch and that if we just stood aside, the same results would have occurred, but those werent the economic forecasts we were looking at at the time, nor do I believe that school of thought to be accurate, but thats another matter. You never saw, one time, Bob Rubin do that, not one time, after he left. He never did anything spontaneously, at least professionally speaking. When we took office and took a hard look at the deficit estimates, they were considerably worse than we had thought. No, there were 20-22 people there. There had been a pre-election transition organization, and Im trying, Jim, to remember who headed up that operation. Did you have a lot of organizational responsibilities, or it was a going concern when you. 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. Who the key players were and so forth. There just wasnt a candidate who had the capability to do that. Were there any big-picture elements that you wanted to put into the puzzle right now or should we just go ahead and break and we can pick up with some of the specifics on these things? Of course, by November 94, many of the benefits of this program had not yet evolved. You referred earlier to Garys question that most of the decisions that Clinton made about his priorities came post-election, but the process. The presumption of course at the beginning was that I knew what the substance of the investigation was, or what the actual issues were from an investigatory legal point of view, and that I had conveyed that to the White House, which was impossible by its turn, absolutely impossible, but in politics thats not often the important thing. We had a good discussion and I went back to the airport and flew home. Because the opponents had succeeded in changing the question, or framing the question, however you want to put it and that had taken hold in the country and the perception across the entire country, from North to South and so forth, was that this is nationalization of healthcare, which nobody in the United States favors. You said earlier you were involved raising some money, but also providing some advice and guidance on economic policy. A little bit. I cant remember allTom Brokaw was there, Davis Weinstock, Dick Beatty, Bob Rubin, George Katz, and/or Bernie Nussbaum were there. Was there awareness at that time, I mean, in the perspective of 2003, I recognize the world looks different. Richard Nixon resigned from office. But I didnt unilaterally choose all the members of it. The Clinton stimulus plan just was not well conceived. In a curious way hed compromised his own position. Fourth, I recall that the economic forecasts for 93 were not very heartening. The social aspect of it also involved here? But of course Republican support was sought. There have been a lot of great American Presidents. She figured in some bumper stickers also. Can you give us a picture? There were some enormous differences. President Bush was very vulnerable, and so Clinton was attacking on the economy and basically saying, if you remember, this rather famous line, he was going to focus like a laser on the economy. The next thing is a free-trade agreement, which I think the President could have dodged, he didnt have to go all out on that. 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