Once he decided he was for it, he really got into it. I wouldnt necessarily accept that. Its a matter of record that I was not asked to resign, but Bentsen, a couple of weeks after the hearings were over, asked me, What do you really want to do? Did you do any traveling with Clinton on the campaign around New York or outside of New York? It wasnt between the political people and the policy people, it was among the policy people and involving some of the political people. None of the aspects of her role bothered me at all. Lets take five minutes and well come back for the rest of the morning session. But in retrospect he basically decided in his simple-minded way that he was going to grind the Soviet Union right into the dust, and he did. But the main argument was economic. We had a chronic problem with Japan because they had so many Prime Ministers. Can you tell us about that? I dont think Id ever met her, but we were serving on the same board together and we became acquainted and occasionally talked about getting together some way or other. So it became effectively a simultaneous multilateral and bilateral summit because it became the setting for Clintons direct discussions with the Japanese Prime Minister. So it was a quick learning experience for Clinton. I did have the impression from the beginning that he was politically gifted and ambitious. He is the only person who has declined because of heath reasons and we wont have the opportunity to talk with him. I raise the question because one of the outside perceptions that you get later on is when, in the early post-election period of the administration, theres some considerable debate within the administration about which of the priorities ought to come first, and among some of the people that you mentioned in Little Rock at the time. Was that true of Georgetown at the time that you were there? He didnt say so, but supposedly he never does. Just be sure it doesnt collapse during the interim. And that kind of input isnt available during the campaign. Do you remember your impressions of Clinton as an undergraduate? 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. He gave the best speech I, at least to that point, had ever heard him give, and I think almost everyone in the administration who was in the room felt the same way. I would actually like to hear you answer that question too. In retrospect, a limited, very grudging change. WebRoger Ebert March 07, 1978. He said, Its up to you. I didnt devise them on my own. So its really a role that varies from Secretary to Secretary in terms of what that Secretary wants, and thats just a history of it. I had known him just slightly. Georgetown was a semi-serious school. He had a certain way of carrying himself and a certain sense of very carefully managing his own stature. I think thats a very important point because it turned out to be an awfully successful piece of legislation and not a single Republican voted for it. But in any event, there I was, and this guy, as I say, was a master of the game. Mostly the latter. It is especially important then for the people who worked with him to give us reflections on his role. But before then, somebody was charged with thinking about transitional issues, actually before the November election, and my question to you is whether, in your work in Treasury transition, you had relied on any work that had been done before? @ 34.032138, -118.722249. Yes, I believe the charter of the RTC transcended whether it was a state chartered or federally chartered S and L. Well, the guarantees were not Federal if they were state chartered. You know, you call in for five minutes apiece and theyre all lined up. In the Carter administration, there was no real sense of what the Federal Reserve really was, what it did, how to deal with it. You know, theres another element of this. 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. The first vote on one of Clintons issues was a defeat, which presaged a lot of the weakness that then afflicted him during 1993. And we had the same in the Carter administration, but it had been more junior. But was there any perspective then that in fact, the Japanese economy was weak relative to the other G7? Now youre raising a subject that is an entirely different one, which is why was this so partisan and why were the Clinton years so partisan? I think that there wasagain, I dont follow this that closelybut there was a fast reaction in short-term rates when the Federal Reserve Board loosened, early on, in what appeared to be quid pro quoGreenspan offered some assurance to Congress that the Fed would be cognizant of the Federal. Thats true, yes. I suppose the problem that the administration confronted was that it was far from being budget-neutral. WebCornerstone Recovering Community (11001 South Wentworth Avenue) located at 11001 South Wentworth Avenue, Chicago, IL 60628, United States is a drug rehab facility I really believe it was that day that his view changed. Right, but if you take too much pain up front. My testimony was rather a highlight of that. I hope he does. That was the first time we had an opposition takeover. I dont believe Yeltsin attended the summit, but there was a lot of focus on Russia and what the G7 could do for Russia at that summit, so it was all kind of nice, uplifting stuff. Did it succeed? Its not as easy. I wasnt there because I was an expert in international finance. You ultimately get into a room like this and you say, youd better start to train me, tell me how this happened. But from the outside, one of the notable departures of that administration, and I think it began very early, was the cordial deference paid toward the Federal Reserve Board. He was not confronted with a grave crisis, but I think history will treat him very well, because essentially. Toward the middle and latter stages they met everyday. Clintons that way. I dont really think Bentsen knew me at all. Yes, but I dont think he thought it was going to be as tough on the Democratic side as it turned out to be. And the next point I want to make is, there was a fateful meeting, like most of these things, very well chronicled now, in Little Rock, up at the transition, the economic team, lasted many hours, very organized meeting in the sense that it had a set of presentations and then a broad discussion. Stephanopoulos was there and Sperling was there. For example, I said earlier, the National Economic Council is not a new idea at all, that the Ford administration had its version, Nixon had his version, and so forth. And every day I would speak to Bentsen about it. 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. I do believe it was able to make a difference. But anyway, in retrospect it was a very bad idea. You had been given a portfolio before that time? I think though, if I can repeat myself once, I finished reading a few months ago a marvelous biography of TR [Theodore Roosevelt], the second volume of Edmund Morris work. It wasnt so much between the political peopleReich wasnt a political person; he wasnt a campaign operator. How difficult was it to do what you were doing in an environment where Mario Cuomo was sort of floating around trying to figure out. 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. So I think it was quite smart to be done then. David Gergen was brought, which I think was probably the fall of 93 and Panetta replaced Mackthat was an awfully big event, of course. The President was in a tough spot because he was hearing from a lot of people that the effort was too ambitious, but on the other hand, Mrs. Clinton was in charge of it. Thats how politics works. He paid more attention to golf and girls in University. In the very beginning it wasnt as availed of, as it quickly became availed of later. Where the negotiations broke down, I dont know what caused it. Our labor leadership did not want that, especially of course, the Teamsters. That ostracism certainly hasnt afflicted the Clinton alumni. Well, about ten minutes later President Clinton called me. He knew how every member would vote. I, and quite a few other people, had dinner with him, quite a few meaning 15 or so. We began to have fundraisers toward the end of 91. But for reasons I dont fully understand, it goes in cycles, and we came into office at a time when an up cycle so to speak on partisanship was asserting itself. I think everybody has a different calculation. Youve had Chiefs of Staff, Don Regan comes to mind, who see themselves as all-powerful and go too far to one end of the spectrum, and youve had others like Mack, who are too deferential and too averse to confrontation and go too far in the other direction. That was the logical place because I served there before. The politics of Oklahoma. So he was frantically calling members of Congress as various requests came in for him to do so. 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. President Clinton, in retrospect, his disavowals on some of his private life were almost certainly false and the way he handled the Lewinsky matter was about as bad as it could be because heessentially swore before the American people that he didnt do it, and of course then recanted. I thought maybe we should step back and let you give us a more organized picture of what it is that you were doing with respect to U.S.-Japanese relations. It was quite an experience, in retrospect. So the fact that a variety of people serve a long time, theres nothing mysterious about that, that had nothing to do with Bill Clinton. So there was not a war of the type that has so often been written about, just not true. A little bit. I think my point is slightly different. Im not an economist, so maybe Im making a bad assumption here, but was there a discussion at this time about when you could start feeling some benefits from this pain that you were asking the President to accept at a fairly early stage in his Presidency? Before you get into that, can I ask you another question about the arrangements on the 1993 budget? Every imaginable issue arose and Clinton hit all those balls out of the park and it gave the American public a chance to see how astonishingly smart and deep this guy was. May I ask you if a part of the political calculus at the time was, Weve just come through a bruising battle with no Republican votes, weve got to do something to reach out and to reestablish better relations with a party thats not going anywhere over the next year, probably for the rest of the Presidency? 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. 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