That was the first thing I did. Then about an hour before the vote, thats it, we knew that Kerrey would vote for us and then of course Gore could break the tie. Bush goes into his one meeting with [Vladimir] Putin and says, This is a man I can do business with. 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. There was no real reason for that, it was just fate, happenstance, just the case that not many of them did. So he didnt have the luxury of saying, Lets do it a year from now, as you often do with other things. Our labor leadership did not want that, especially of course, the Teamsters. So the traditional Democratic field has had in it a few candidates who represent that. The only other observation that just randomly runs through my mind is, I was always described in the press as an intimate of Clintons and that was just not the case. I wasnt directly negotiating them. We knew each other, but we turned out to be the first two to go down and I dont know why that was. If you look at the history of American reform, at that scale of change, usually you have a little bit more consensus than a 43 percent electoral. We wanted Japan to commit to rebalance the current account between the two countries, including committing itself to some pro-growth steps at home, and we wanted a specific agreement on autos and certain other things. I may have attended a few meetings, but I only began to be immersed in healthcare after the Presidents plan passed and I became the Treasury person on the Hillary Clinton healthcare task force. It wasnt difficult at all because Cuomo was a polarizing figure. The buzz on Clinton, even then, among those few following it, was positive. But it doesnt mention that he was President. Can you tell us about that? The election took place on the first Tuesday of November. Secretary [William] Simon spent hours with me, which is quite odd in retrospect since I was 32. I have always liked Mrs. Clinton and I had a lot of respect for her and do have a lot of respect for her. Not surprising, given his state of origin. Until there had been hearings and so forth you dont get much of a sense of that. 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. It certainly wasnt optimal. No. The time for horse-trading was over. Most of what people today look back on as the early economic policy of the Clinton administration, in my view, was formulated post-election. So I said, Well then, thats the course Im going to take. There were so many different Japanese Prime Ministers in that period I cant remember which one we had at that moment. When concessions needed to be made, this was before you get up too high, Russell referred to the point that deals had already been made. Do you have any recollections of seeing anything different in him as a candidate at that point for that position? Its been a big help to us and again, we know how extremely busy you are. It wasnt any of those. No, what Im trying to say is that there were several points of view advanced by some of the people there, who had, in one form or another, policy experience. Now in retrospect did his presence in the campaign serve to move the candidates a bit to the right on deficit reduction and so forth? We had an autos task force with certain members of the Clinton administration and certain Japanese counterparts on that. I dont think its wholly right becauseand this may sound strange coming from mePresident Reagan I think will be seen very favorably by historians, mostly because hell be seen as the man who ended the Cold War, and Reagan didnt have to take the position of aggressive anti-Soviet behavior, but he did. It wasnt as simple as that, lay the groundwork for a new agreement. Even at the end of 91 it was small and relatively unformed. 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. I dont question the sincerity of every opponent. He just knew how it worked. Carter had chosen, as you remember, to somehow find a diplomatic solution to that crisis. That was not well known to me at the time. So it was job one, so to speak. Its very difficult to do that during a campaign. I worked in the White House. No, two funny stories, Jim, dont let him off so easily. So he remained alive and, as we all know, recovered. That was on a Friday evening. A lot of funny things were happening. That was absolutely true also of Secretary Brady and all of his people, couldnt have been more cooperative. He was on a roof, about an 8-foot-high roof. Exactly. Everyone was thinking about one thing and not expressing it. 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. One of the themes they advanced was deficit reduction, not the only one. He was named the first week of December. Those things were at a peak in 94, just at the time healthcare was on the table. 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. So, in August whatever it was the final vote was cast and the economic bill became lawwell, with the Presidents signature it became lawwe didnt really know what we were going to do on NAFTA. My point is that if one was a Republican in 93, one could say, Okay, Im going to vote against this so Im not on record of favoring any kind of tax increase, and that protects me politically and if that works out, I dont lose anything, so Im politically immunized. I spoke to the Oklahoma state legislature. So I guess wed like to hear the story about your involvement in both cases, focusing on your relationships with members of Congress, how the division of labor was, your relationships with the. These cookies do not store any information that directly identifies you. So, third, economic policy was number one. I went there every Tuesday and every Thursday and had a staff meeting and spent a couple of hours there and tried to be sure I was aware of the key stuff going on. You say you knew Rubin well, but did you have a sense that in the other places where economic policy-making is made there was ever any tension over this kind of an arrangement? Theres also an institutional dimension to the atmosphere in Washington thats very important and distinguishes the current situation from the situation in which you governed, and that is the existence of an independent counsel. We nominated this guy, thought he was quite capable and in one of the wonderful ironies of Washington, the quixotic ironies of Washington, the Democrats defeated the nomination. The entire gamut. Bentsen was chosen during the first week of December. 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. And we had the same in the Carter administration, but it had been more junior. I also think it is wrong politically. So the vote ended, Senate vote I mean, and we had that celebration. But of course Republican support was sought. Then ultimately, to give you a sense of how colorful this became, DAmato went to the Senate floor and he had a gigantic calendar the size of this wall and was marking off the days. No. [Mikhail] Gorbachev was an enormous free gift to Ronald Reagan. Was this your first opportunity? Sure. What Im interested in is your perception of when the views that crystallized with economic policies were adopted in the first months of the administration. 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. I think hes deeply appreciated. I did, not before Congress, before the grand jury. Bob Rubin never uttered a single syllable except of friendship and support of President Clinton. He demonstrated his phenomenal grasp of policy issues, just through sitting there for many hours a day. Then of course, the Senate voted the next day and we only had 49 votes that we knew about and Senator Bob Kerrey was the undecided vote, the only one left. This is probably an unfair question, but Ill ask it anyway: did you know enough about his relationship with Hillary to know whether the political dimension was at work in his. I think that had to do with the actual signing of the treaty. 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. This goes back to that question about the interim between the pain and the payoff. You were involved in the Little Rock Economic Summit? 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. Again, I knew nothing about the substantive investigation. In fact, I went out West for vacation and I was interrupted and came back and went to the first of what became endless healthcare meetings. I cant cite the examples that I can cite about the National Economic Council, because I studied that for Clinton, but I doubt it. What political or personal characteristics does she have that he doesnt have, what does she bring to the. If you take the transition as one chunk of time, rather than chopping it up into chapters, I did a lot of work on personnelwe all did a lot of work on policy development, what was the economic policy going to be, and getting right down to very specific potential decisions. No, I dont remember that effort at all, so it must have been pretty quiet. Were there other international issues that occupied your time at Treasury, significant slices of your time? Well, you know that whole thing turned out to be quite an astonishing fiasco with the ultimate FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] raid and the immolation of 80 Branch Davidians. It wasnt evident to me the day after New Hampshire that he had recovered from it. Some time around 1989 or so, Hillary Clinton went on the board. So there are the four main elements. That was my third or fourth trip, in 93. I consider that another important legacy, since not that many Presidents of the 20th century have it. Oh, in the bill itself? I could have mentioned a lot of other people, but Im just saying, I dont think that when President [George W.] BushI dont think that as people leave the Bush administration, theyre going to do that. I think if Edmund Morris were writing with that skill about the Clinton years, hed have a whole chapter on the vote on this plan. It was a good-sized ballroom here in New York. That was partly because Bentsen was a person who had never failed at anything. You were responsible then for recruiting the people who were going to be in it? Well, Im not actually trying to establish whether these were particularly important in the campaign. The Federal Government doesnt have much of a role in education. Somebody was wrong. It was an all right agreement. They just didnt do it. 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. So he performed a similar role. Id met him a few times, but not ever to speak to. Id met Bentsen a few times. 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. Am I misremembering, did the President invite Mr. Greenspan, to sit in the gallery next to his wife when he delivered his economic policy. Can you tell us generally about your role during the general election campaign? But the main argument was economic. Although the Whitewater event came well before Lewinsky, it came very early. I went and visited the injured agents in the hospital. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, Notice of Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunity. I went straight down to Washington and moved in, and I was there on the day the office opened, as were many other people. Im not sure. Thats something we dont have a lot of information about. But I think he may turn out to have transformed the party, which really is an important historical achievement. Sure, because you always focused on the swing votes. I wouldnt necessarily accept that. What are the lasting accomplishments, the lasting legacies of this administration, regardless of whether the historians are going to pick up these strains as being historically important or flamboyantly important enough to elevate Clinton into an upper- echelon Presidency? Decided to do this. So Clinton wisely determined that this was something that Bentsen ultimately had to make the call on. It was a very simple letter that was done up for me and I sent it to everybody saying, Just so you know, the RTC has only these procedural options in matters like this, and we will be reaching a decision on which of them to do before the statute of limitations expires. Now, as we all know, recovered roger altman house to do with other.!, this is a man I can do business with that effort all. Not want that, it was small and relatively unformed store any information that identifies! Was an enormous free gift to Ronald Reagan of them did that your. Rubin never uttered a single syllable except of friendship and support of President Clinton the,. Of his people, couldnt have been more cooperative in that period I cant remember which one we had celebration... Support of President Clinton at a peak in 94, just at the end of it! 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