VIEW FROM WASHINGTON / JAMES RISEN : Fall Guy Altman--Master of Politics and Policy--Will Be Missed

Last weekend, Roger Altman was back at his ranch in Wyoming’s Jackson Hole, looking tanned and relaxed, entertaining friends like White House chief economist Laura D’Andrea Tyson and her family and planning a backcountry camping trip where the only white water he’s likely to encounter will be on the Snake River.

Altman, the deputy Treasury secretary who was forced to resign Aug. 17 because of his involvement in the Whitewater scandal, has clearly come to terms with his role as the Clinton Administration’s designated fall guy. His net worth of $20 million to $30 million--earned during a heady career as a Wall Street investment banker--no doubt has helped soften the blow, providing him with a wonderful retreat in the shadows of the Grand Tetons.

But above all, Altman seems at peace with himself because he is convinced he did little, if anything, wrong during his 1 1/2 years in office--that he was simply the victim of nasty partisan politics.

Altman and his allies believe that Sen. (R-N.Y.), the leading Senate Republican attacker on Whitewater, was out for blood and saw Altman as a vulnerable target. Jittery senior White House aides were more than happy to throw Altman overboard, his circle contends, to satisfy D’Amato and to keep the Republicans from coming after them. In fact, Altman supporters at the Treasury Department are just as angry at the White House for their abandonment of Altman during and after this summer’s Whitewater hearings as they are at D’Amato.

Indeed, his allies warn bitterly that the White House will soon regret Altman’s loss.

That’s because Altman was one of the few senior officials in the Clinton Administration who could bridge the wide gap between the “substance people” and the “political people”--the two camps that have often feuded for power and position in the Clinton hierarchy.

Altman moved easily between the two groups and brought to internal turf battles the intangible benefits of being an old college friend of Bill Clinton. Not only did he love the give-and-take of politics, but he also was rooted in Wall Street’s sober sense of the practical.

Altman had played a similar dual role during his career in New York, where he was both a successful investment banker and a Democratic Party insider, and so was prepared to carry those switch-hitting skills to the major leagues when he came to Washington with Clinton.

All that explains why he played a much bigger role in the Administration than his title would suggest.

“Roger could bridge that gap better than anybody else,” laments one former Altman colleague. “He could talk politics with (political consultant) James Carville and (senior adviser) George Stephanopolous, but he also fit in well with everyone on the economic team,” noted another. “That is really rare. And without him, I’m not sure anyone will even be trying to build bridges like that.”

Altman’s dual talents showed most clearly during last year’s budget battle. Throughout the post-election transition and the early stages of the Administration, Altman worked the inside game. He teamed with Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen and his close friend Robert Rubin, chairman of the National Economic Council, to push Clinton toward a more conservative economic plan that emphasized deficit reduction and abandoned many of Clinton’s expensive campaign promises.

But once the plan was sent to Capitol Hill, Altman moved from the Treasury over to the White House to run the “war room,” whose job was selling the budget package to the public and Congress. He directed the Administration’s public relations campaign, dived into the lobbying battle and probably deserves as much credit for the plan’s passage as anyone.

By the end of 1993, Clinton was asking Altman to take on an ever-widening range of tough tasks, from handling bilateral trade negotiations with Japan to trying to help Clinton find a way to finance the Administration’s health care reform plan.

In hindsight, Altman was clearly spread too thin; he ultimately got in trouble for taking on the additional role of acting chairman of the Resolution Trust Corp., the independent regulatory agency that was handling the Whitewater-related investigation of a failed Arkansas thrift.

Once again, Altman displayed instincts at the RTC for both politics and policy; this time, however, mixing the two was a fatal mistake and left him trapped in Whitewater’s crosscurrents.

In Altman’s absence, the gulf between the economic and political factions inside the Administration threatens to get much wider. And the selection of Leon Panetta, the former budget director, as White House chief of staff isn’t likely to solve the problem.

Panetta, a leading deficit hawk and a key member of the economic team, clashed repeatedly with Carville and fellow political consultant Paul Begala during Clinton’s first year in office and has already moved to shut off their direct access to Clinton. Even Stephanopolous now has to get clearance from Panetta to see the President.

While those moves show that Panetta and the economic team are in the ascendancy, they are likely to leave a legacy of bitterness and resentment. And without a mediator like Roger Altman, the wounds may go unhealed until the 1996 presidential campaign.